I Need To Think About My Future (Part 5)

Read Part 1 here.

Read Part 2 here.

Read Part 3 here.
Read Part 4 here.

Authenticity and Disclaimer

I find it intriguing that I am writing this series of posts as if I knew what I am talking about with some sort of authority. Looking back I see that I generally do that with all of my writings. I of course am not an expert on the subject but, generally speaking, anything that self-proclaimed experts have to say should be taken with a grain of salt.  I can legitimately claim that I am able to bring a lifetime of experience to my writings on most subjects and I have spent a considerable amount of time and research through reading, actively pursuing and thinking about the issues raised here. This must give my writings a certain amount of validity. They certainly make sense to me but you must be the final judge and arbiter of what you take from them.

I suppose I should issue some sort of disclaimer and warning that I am not responsible for any possible outcome arising from any person following advice given in these pages and that all persons who do so, act entirely at their own risk.  

Expanding the Envelope

Just a brief word on collapse.  If you have been giving serious thought to the future of our society/civilisation whether from what you have read here or elsewhere, you may be asking yourself the question as to why I have only really attributed the primary reasons for collapse so far to mainly the frailty of financial systems.  There is a reason for this and it is mainly to do with keeping it simple as the excesses and activities of the banking and finance industries is something that I think most people can recognise as being a problem.  There are of course many other potential sources of collapse.  Notice that I have not so far mentioned much about catastrophic climate change, food shortage, unavailability of drinking water, shortages of other resources, loss or restriction of basic freedoms and human rights by world government or mega corporations, global pandemics or nuclear war.  Note also that this list of potential triggers is by no means exhaustive.

I do not wish to further expand on these things in these pages other than to raise them as and when they affect my own preparations and decisions, so as not to complicate the message too much.

Making it Personal Again

Perhaps the best way that I can make this real is to return to my original theme of working out pathways to solve my own problems with regard to future events and the steps I have taken or am thinking of taking.

I have already made what I consider to be the best first step in gaining some confidence that I have the greatest possible opportunity to enjoy a continued existence should bad things happen in the world. I have relocated my home to the country, almost an hour drive from the metropolis and at least 30 kilometres from any small town.

That most people would not see my actions as a priority for themselves due to being tied to a property through ownership, I can readily see. I would also say that in these cases it is even more imperative for property owners to be aware of trends that would indicate a collapsing society and to be well prepared to exit stage left at a moment's notice when personal judgement indicates the time is right. Delay may well be fatal, life is far more valuable than property and pebbles on a beach get bowled over and generally knocked about by tidal waves.

There is no doubt in my mind that desperate people will be capable of trekking further out from urbania than I currently dwell in search of food but hopefully not in the hoards that will be pouring out from outer metropolitan suburbs towards surrounding areas in order to escape the carnage of inner cities in the worst of cases.  Even if the military and police forces are able to retain some form of cohesion within their organisations for a time, and that is unlikely because many of these people also have families of their own, they will be so vastly outnumbered by the hoards of starving populace that any hope of maintaining civil order will quickly be dashed.

I am not saying that such chaos is likely to occur overnight, but it could. At that point it is too late to start preparing. Many home owners or apartment dwellers will initially be reluctant to abandon their homes, preferring to stay to protect their investment or to wait for a government response and a restoring of order which may never come. There may well be cases of disorder from time to time where some sort of normality will be restored by authorities and this may set a dangerous precedent in people's mind that law and order will always prevail.

However, I believe there will come a time of total systemic failure where there will be no possibility of retaining public order or recovering it for periods of months or years afterwards, if ever, and this dramatic situation may arise very suddenly, perhaps even over a single night.  The wait and see approach will in such cases most likely prove fatal for many as their homes and gardens are overrun by floods of evacuees desperately searching for food or evading terror and destruction.  Even so, there will likely be a delay of a few days, certainly not weeks, where the signs become obvious that remaining in your property, as if your home is your castle, will not be a healthy choice.

Folk who make the right decision to abandon their homes in time will simply add to the migratory spread of pilgrims emanating from the city boundaries to survive.  Few of these people will have made any realistic effort to prepare for such eventualities.

Where the cause of a mass migration from a city is due to total destruction (eg. permanent inundation by flooding, nuclear detonation or other WMD), the area will already have been cleared of human activity by the event.  In other cases, I can see gang warfare, rape, torture, cannibalism and a very short life expectation among those who elect to remain.  This is where those baser animal instincts will come to the fore. Those who come out on top of this orgy of terror, after all other resources have been consumed, will then go looking elsewhere for their pleasures and needs to be met.

When Did I start Thinking Like This?

Way back in 1972 when I was introduced to the newly published book 'Limits To Growth', a report of the Club of Rome, as part of a Technology Foundation Course I was taking towards an Open University batchelors degree which I never completed (the degree, not the course or the book), I was made aware that shortly after the turn of the century ie. round about now, as I write this, unless the world's people did something about curtailing usage of Earth resources, economic growth and population growth, civilisation would come up against finite limits to what they were doing and their way of life would enter a serious decline in all three of these parameters.  In other words, the world (at least, the world of human society) would enter a period of irreversible collapse.

Over time, with the pressing foci of bringing up families, career changes, divorce, emigration and all of the other vagaries of life, I let the memories of what I had learned lapse to the back of my mind.  Around 25 years later, towards the end of the century, these things came back into focus as a result of further reading and study.  I realised that during that intervening period, absolutely nothing  had been done anywhere around the world to address the issues raised by the authors of this report. That realisation re-ignited my interest in the subject and set me off on a new learning spree that continues to this day.

I have to admit that Limits to Growth was such dreadfully boring stuff that only a research scientist could have taken pleasure in and fully understood and to this day I have not completed reading the 30 year sequel published in 2004, and probably never will.  

It is the not the content but the conclusions that are essential to understand.  

Even now, more than forty years on from the initial findings, these premises (they were not meant to be predictions) have not proven false or inaccurate in any way. Our way of life is at the crossroads, or cliff edge if you like, because we have stupidly and blindly followed disastrous economic, population and resource usage pathways as if we were living on an infinitely large planet where we could do whatever we liked without any sort of consequences.   

I am aware that much of this sounds very dramatic, perhaps even forced.  I wish that I could make it sound even more dramatic, and necessary, and urgent, because I see people who have no idea that this sort of event is about to rock their world and are totally unprepared or in any way concerned about the prospect. But if 'Limits to Growth' and the myriad of other warning voices that have been raised over this period have not done the trick, then what hope do I have of altering the outcome. My only wish is that someone somewhere will read this, in time, and experience a light bulb moment.  

Read, Research, Plan

Even before I retired in 2010, I had become acutely aware of the imminent possibility of collapse (the 2008/9 GFC had something to do with that) and started to make preparations for survival while living alone and renting a small unit in an outer suburb.  I realised that if I had to move anywhere under circumstances that I was anticipating to arise as I have attempted to describe, it was obvious that until I could find some safe long-term shelter and provide for an adequate regular food supply and other basic necessities of life, I was likely going to have to live rough for at least some time and perhaps for lengthy periods.  I spent a lot of time considering this, researching around it and planning for it.

The prospect was quite worrying.  I had spent most of my waking hours over the last 30 some years in air-conditioned offices, cars or home buildings.  I was not, by any definition, an outdoors person. However, I knew that I was capable of hard work as while living in my last owned home in the early '90s I had constructed gardens and retaining walls built from Nullarbor sourced genuine old Jarrah railway sleepers, manhandled by myself alone over a virgin suburban block with a 7.5m fall from back to front of the land. I had become quite fit while doing that but over intervening years my life became more sedentary although I knew I could rebuild myself again if necessary.

I did return to a level of fitness while living alone.  From the first day I made the decision to be vegetarian and have not included meat of any kind in my diet for over ten years now.  I studied Reiki (Level III practitioner), medical Qi Gong and also Touch for Health Kinesiology.  All of which I practised for personal health.

In all of that time I had not needed to consult medical aid of any sort.  Even after turning 60 I had full expectation of living in a healthy body for another forty years at least.  It was a great disappointment to me therefore when I fell ill for a while as I described in an earlier post, but I haven't let that stop me from pursuing a healthy lifestyle or preparing for whatever type of collapse scenario might lay ahead.

I am now (next post) going provide details, as specifically as I can, or feel that it is safe for me to divulge, about what I have learned, the type of preparations I have made and the benefits and reasons for doing so.

My intention is then to record my thinking on the paths forward that I might reasonably take in my own best interests for a safe future.

So, I expect to still be making quite a few posts in this series.  They may not come quite as thick and fast as up to this point.

    

I Need To Think About My Future (Part 4)

Read Part 1 here.

Read Part 2 here.

Read Part 3 here.

Without Civilisation

The veneer of civilisation surrounding human beings is exceedingly thin. Beneath that veneer we are still basically animals, though animals with a conscience and an innate knowledge of what is right and what is wrong. Yet it never ceases to amaze me the depth of cruelty we are capable of inflicting on fellow humans and other living things around us, given the appropriate circumstances.

I think of myself as a sensitive person, never seeking conflict with others.  In fact I will normally go out of my way to avoid conflict of any sort, even verbal conflict, if it is at all possible. Yet I know that I am capable of killing, given sufficient reason.  Self preservation or the protection of loved ones or other defenceless people would be sufficient reason.  While I don't like to think about it, so would extreme hunger or thirst or the need for shelter.  I hope never to be put to the test over those things but I fear such days will come.

Behind me I have 9 years of military service and I was proud to qualify as a marksman on the FN rifle, known as the SLR Self Loading Rifle when it was the standard infantry weapon of the British armed forces throughout the 1970s.  A fine weapon, capable of removing arms and legs or taking out multiple hostiles with a single 7.62mm NATO round if lined up correctly.  At the time I was capable of putting 20 out of 20 rounds inside a 2 inch grouping in the middle of a man shaped and sized target at 50 metres even though disadvantaged by being left-handed and left-eyed with a weapon that was made only for right handed use. While my focal capabilities may be diminished today, my eyesight is still healthy and given a modern rifle I am positive that I could cause havoc on any group of hostiles at medium to long range even though I have not handled a firearm in the intervening years. I have never been involved in close combat and at my age I guess I would last no more than a few seconds if that became necessary though I have now equipped myself with certain survival gear and I am confident that I am capable of slitting a throat or two given the element of surprise, if the need arose.

If I have those capabilities and a recognition, as a rational person, that I would be willing to use them in need, then I know that other folk are at least equally as capable of doing so as myself, given the right conditions.  In a crumbling, decaying society at the point of collapse, with most normal services of civilisation gone, perhaps for ever, and a driving need to survive, eat, drink and obtain shelter, those conditions would be rife.

The lack of respect for, and the apparent lack of fear of law enforcement these days, particularly among the younger generation, is I think a sure sign of a decaying society.

I could provide esoteric reasons for why I believe this is happening at this particular juncture in our history but this is not the time or place for that.

I struggled with these thoughts running through my head during what turned out to be a difficult and restless night's sleep and rose early to get them written down before they dissipated as many of my night-time thoughts do. This was not an  easy thing for me to do and I am aware that I may regret doing so at a later time. I do however attach a great deal of importance to these thoughts because I think that most people living relatively comfortable lives in the modern world would give little thought to how thin the line is between the human and animal sides of our nature and how easily what may be relatively minor changes in our material circumstances may cause us communally or individually to flick from one to the other, from normal life to survival mode with little warning.

Many of us may well have have cause to live out this experience in days to come as many of our predecessors have done in times past. We, in the developed nations have enjoyed decades of relative peace and prosperity, lulling us into a false sense of security that it will always be thus.  History teaches us, if we care to examine it, that for almost all of mankind's sojourn on this planet, we have lived through times of turmoil and peril, threatened by invasion, barbarism and terror with relatively short periods of calm and peaceful existence. Empires and civilisations have risen and fallen, rarely (if ever) peacefully. Our own civilisation, be assured, is not immune from the same process.

While I speak of civilisation, let me make it clear that I speak not of individual nations, countries or regions as the term might have indicated in past centuries or millennia. No, I am referring to the global community of mankind, united as at no other time in our history prior to the last few decades or so.  Yes, we still recognise individual nations, continental groupings, even tribal boundaries still. There are however, no communities on Earth that are now unaffected by what transpires in other communities, anywhere on the globe. One global civilisation, no part of which is not affected in some way by the successes or failures of some other part. Of course this unification is not in any way set in concrete and when the global collapse is in full swing, as it inevitably must be at some point, national and regional boundaries will again fracture and close ranks for what they see as reasons of self-protection.  But none will ever again achieve the prosperity (so called, but tragically based on unsupported mountains of debt) that they enjoyed for such a little while in this current period of globalisation.

~ : ~    

I thought of finishing this post here and perhaps I should, but I keep promising to get on to something a little more immediate and so I will keep on going for a little while, changing the subject matter.

The need for vigilance

Our major concern now should be how to place ourselves to give the best prospect of getting through any ensuing period of turmoil that might arise.

To my mind there are two basic principles for retaining personal safety during a collapse of modern society which are corollaries to each other.

1. The further away from living and/or working in an urban environment and even more so for a metropolitan environment, the better chance you have to survive a societal collapse situation.
2. The closer in to a metropolitan environment and to a lesser extent an urban environment that you live and/or work, the lower the chance you have to survive a societal collapse situation.

I should not need to state the following as it is quite obvious, but I will.  By far, most of the world's population now live in cities. Cities mostly consist of densely saturated urban areas grouped around even more densely saturated metropolitan centres where people are literally sitting or standing on top of one another in high rise buildings. Every day there is a mass migration from the perimeters of such conglomerations to the centre and back again at the end of the day.  Even so, the centres more and more tend to retain a more dense population that the urban extremities, even overnight. 

Imagine, if you will, the following sample situations that may one day confront you.

You work in a city hub within a large metropolis.  You take public transport to work in the morning and return in the evening to your home in an outer suburb. A journey of perhaps 40-50 minutes.

What would you do if you hear on the evening news or even the morning news before your walk or ride to the commuter station that there are planned demonstrations in the city for around mid-day against job losses at a major industry.  There may be severe delays on the commuter lines during the day. This, amid a period of growing community tension over wide ranging government cutbacks.  The share markets have been rising faster than at any time previously but this is of little concern to you as you have no share portfolio.

Do you shrug your shoulders and set off for work as normal? Risking enduring an extended working day as a result of transport delays?  Or do you say 'This looks bad, and could get worse. I will ride it out at home just in case.'

You decide to go to work anyway since you have a season ticket (and a very important job which you can't afford to lose).  Can't be as bad as it sounds.  You buy your normal coffee-to-go before starting work but the outlet is not accepting plastic cards for some reason.  No problem, you have just enough cash to pay for it.  Lunch time you go down to the bank because you now don't have cash to buy lunch, but get caught up in the crowds attending the demonstration.  This merely delays you, wasting your precious lunch period but you see and hear things that indicate this could get ugly later on.  At the ATM you notice it is out of order for some reason and a lot of people are milling around outside the bank, which has armed guards allowing only a few people inside at a time.

Your lunch time almost gone, do you:

• Go back to work hungry, to see if anyone will lend you cash for the snack bar?
• Take stock of the situation, realise this is going downhill fast and leave for home while transport is still running?

You return to work.  On the grapevine, sometime later you learn that the demonstration has turned into a riot and the city is in gridlock.  Do you immediately leave for home hoping to catch transport?  Or, do you wait until normal end of work, chancing it to luck?

You have important stuff to finish and stay on even later than normal knowing that the public transport timetable has regular scheduled times well into the evening. You pack up and head out to the station to find that all services have ceased until further notice. On the street you hear that the share market has crashed and to prevent further runs all banks have closed until further notice.

You have no cash and no alternative but to walk home, tired and hungry, a journey prospect of some some 9-10 hours making your way through darkened streets that you may never have travelled before, lit by many fires from the rioting which is sporadically still going on in some areas and while most shops are closed, there are already signs of looting and muggings.

Luck being on your side, you eventually make it home to a frantic and worried family in the early hours of the morning. That is when your problems really start. What do you do next?

If you have been following this story, at what point would you have pulled the plug and said 'Enough, I'm outta here'?  

Let's change the scenario a little. Your job is the same but now you live in an inner-city apartment. Do you still go to work as normal?  If so, do you still work a full day?  I suggest that a lot of people would be more prepared to do so than our commuter friend, because you do not face a 10 hour walk home. But are you any safer? You are now stuck in the centre of a riot torn, traffic disrupted metropolis. You still face at least a 10 hour walk to get out of the city and away from the dangers that it holds, but you would be more likely to delay your departure, feeling relatively safe in your apartment. Every day, every hour that you delay, decreases your opportunities to make a safe exit from the turmoil.  Within two days there would be widespread looting.  Within three days there would be no more food left in the centre. By the fourth day, one week at the outside, the desperate people from the centre would start fanning out in an ever increasing circle to the city limits over time, taking what ever they could find to try to meet their needs.  Of course, it wouldn't end there.

What would you do?

This may all sound a bit extreme and contrived. Something out of a zombie movie. But there are many ways that something like this could start, not just the few triggering events that I mentioned.  Think about it for a while. Such scenarios are possible and they may arise quickly like this case, perhaps even faster than that. They may also play out over extended periods and that perhaps is more dangerous because the changes may not be as perceptible.

Many of us are so caught up in the minutiae of life that we also would fail to notice the signs of trouble brewing into situations similar to what I have described. The first important lesson to learn from this I think is vigilance. Develop the habit, if you do not do so already, of noticing what is going on around you, in your city or region and in the world in general. Read widely, not just here, about events that could trigger periods of trouble, for your own sake and for those you love.

I Need To Think About My Future (Part 3)

Read Part 1 here.
Read Part 2 here.

Is this where I want to go?

Looking back, I see that I have already strayed somewhat from what my original intentions were for this series of posts but that is precisely why I named this blogspot 'Meanderings'. Because that is what I tend to do.  Hopefully my writings will circuitously return to where I want to be.  Restating my intention, to assist that process, will I hope provide a guide and direction. 

I see ahead a whole range of probable futures.  I see my present state and readiness/ unreadiness to face those situations.  I am looking for paths to progress from my current state to successfully meet whatever the future may bring.  

How do I define success?  Well, by survival, managing to keep body and soul together in working order, in the short term.  In the medium term by being able to live in a state of harmless wellbeing, harmoniously prospering (not in terms of wealth or power but in sufficiency in all necessary things) and integrating peacefully with other people and the natural world and perhaps, though not necessarily (I would be happy to achieve even the medium term goal) leading in the long term to some form of Shangri-La or possibly even a Shambala.  Though not associated with any particular faith other than an awe and reverance for nature. 

I suspect some of the above may attract criticism but we all have our own personal dreams and I am entitled to mine.

Why am I doing this publicly on a blog?  A thought came to me this morning and at the risk of being thought a pompous fool (if that is not already the case), I will relate my journey to that of Everyman, that non-gender specific person with whom we can all identify.  Ridiculous thought really since I have already admitted that I think of myself as being different to most people. But then, we all probably do that to some extent. 

However on a more generic level, the sort of things that I have, and will continue to  talk about, are the very things that I believe 'Everyman' will need to take into account in their own journey into the future.  With that in mind I will press ahead.

Aside

Before continuing, I want to mention some news I heard this morning.

Firstly it appears that all children born from this year, 2013, will be known as Generation Alpha.  They are expected to be smarter, richer and healthier than previous generations and there are so far, 300,000 of them in Australia alone, surpassing even the baby boom of 1947.  Who decides how to name these things?  And what happened to Gen-Z?  Or did that sound too final and apocalyptic?  Who says these children are going to be superior to all others in many ways? What evidence do they have to say those things?  The recent evidence would indicate that future generations are more likely to be dummed down, subject to more and worse diseases, and have to scramble for a smaller and smaller share of the ever shrinking wealth pie.  I have on several occasions urged young women to carefully consider not bearing children at this time because of the dangers they will face.  It seems the world's womenfolk are not listening. Over population is already one of the highest rated problems that we face as a species. Sad, sad, sad.  But makes my work all the more urgent.

Secondly, I watched on the TV news, demonstrations and riots in four major cities in as many different countries this morning.  If this is not indicative of a society in collapse then I do not know what is.  These are almost daily occurrences that I believe are set to worsen as time progresses.  A society turning on itself is not a society that is likely to grow and as soon as growth stops or falters, the whole crumbling edifice of corruption and greed will fall.  This is not the society that I was born into.  It would be quite unrecogniseable to my mother if she were in a state where she could take an active interest in such things.  There is no doubt in my mind that we are on the edge of a period of revolution, anarchy and mayhem the like of which has never been seen before and the western nations, despite their military strength and growing police state tactics, being in a largely already bankrupt state, will be powerless to stop it from tearing our cosy world apart. I can only hope that once the floodgates open, it will be quickly over.  Otherwise there will be very few of us left to pick up the pieces and start again.

These things are timely reminders to me as to why I am doing this blog and taking the actions that I do.

I think I will leave it there for today and start from where I said I would in the previous post in the next one.

  

I Need To Think About My Future (Part 2)

Read Part 1 here.

Recap

I began this line of reasoning in the first post of this series by outlining something of my personal situation and by beginning to detail certain reasons for me to take serious thought about my future.

The fragility of the global financial system and the possible impacts of another failure following on from the Global Financial Crisis on my personal income through consequent government and commercial collapses, were discussed.  The need for preparations to endure and overcome such events was raised.

I posed the question 'What Else?' then closed off the post and went to bed.

This morning marked the start of a wet weekend and also, being 1 June, the first day of Winter in the southern hemisphere cultural calendar (though this seems to be just an arbitrary date chosen for convenience and bears no relationship to nature's solsticial calendar). There being nothing worthwhile or demanding of my presence to do outside, I had to choose whether to continue with this writing or play Company of Heroes or Borderlands 2 as a form of escapism from these disturbing issues.

Sometimes I wonder why I put myself under this form of pressure but I resolved to continue the work while the thoughts were still fresh in my mind and made myself a freshly ground cup of real organic coffee as a reward.  I can always 'escape' a little later.

Continuing where we left off...

What Else?

Well, there are any number of different aspects of life that can be affected by various possible futures.  Have I thought of all of them?  I doubt it.  There are also many of these situations that are basically outside of the sphere of things that I/we can control.  In those cases we either relocate if that is possible and there is somewhere that we can relocate to, we bunker down to ride out the worst effects, if we have the means, and consider that a safe thing to do, or, if there is no alternative or we don't care or we do not attach sufficient weight to the possibility of such events arising in our neck of the woods, we get steamrollered by overtaking events.  

I find that it is most beneficial to concentrate on stuff that we have the capacity to exercise some form of control over.  Let's think of some of those things.

Just for a while imagine that some of the possible events I spoke about in the previous post were taking place now.  That's not hard to do and it is not a case of 'if' but more of 'when' they might occur.  This may seem to be remote thinking here in Australia but if you were a European or even an American citizen, your focus on the imminence or even the reality of such things may be quite different.  Don't take the view that 'Hey, the equity markets are higher than they have ever been, so things are looking up'.  Wasn't it just that way before the last crash?  Aren't we just setting ourselves up for another?  Do you think the unemployed of Europe and the US, many of whom used to be relatively well off professional middle class people, are thinking of equity markets right now?  No, they are struggling to survive on government handouts on a daily basis.  Collapse and poverty are real.  Equity markets are Fairy Floss.  

Perhaps these circumstances would become more real to more people if there were to be a sudden change, like all of this were to happen tomorrow.  Then what would we do? Could that happen?  I can see, and have read, of many ways that could occur.  However, history tells us that societies and civilisations do not generally crumble overnight. Occasionally they do, but more often it takes an average of 150 years as John Michael Greer explains in his book  The Long Descent: A User's Guide To The End Of The Industrial Age.

It could be argued that this civilisation started to disintegrate after the end of the Second World War and there are enough signs that we are on the path of collapse today that might indicate that we are approaching the halfway point towards total societal collapse, the good half or the least worst half of that path having already been experienced. It would be a mistake I think to expect anything to improve over the next 75 years and conditions are very likely to get considerably more uncomfortable the further we progress down that path, other factors not yet mentioned notwithstanding.

Imagine this...

So, you find yourself at some point (doesn't matter if this happens quickly or over some considerable period) with no job, and most other people, your neighbours, your friends, your extended family, are in the same boat.  The shops are empty because transport businesses have shut down (for any number of reasons).  Most of the police have gone home to protect their families (and because they are no longer being paid).  The army is largely overseas fighting some (now) meaningless war and there is no early prospect of getting most of them back home.  Doctors and nurses have almost all walked off the job for the same reasons as the police.  Banks and their ATMs have closed doors because too many people are trying to withdraw their savings and there is not enough real money to allow that to happen (I have written about that elsewhere).  There is no electricity because the diesel fuel to run the trains that bring the coal to the power stations has run out and the coal mines also can't operate their machinery to mine more coal and the refineries or fuel storage facilities cannot produce/receive more stocks or are shut down for use only by military or essential services by the government. You have run out of petrol and the service station pumps don't work (no electricity) or are empty due to no delivery of fuel.  Your domestic taps stop channelling water because the pumping stations have no power.  Streets and major intersections are gridlocked because traffic lights stopped working and cars are left where they ran out of fuel. Public transport has ceased to exist.  The children are wailing because they are hungry (and/or bored - no TV or electronic games). You can't flush your toilets and even if you could you finished your last roll of toilet paper yesterday.  Grandma needs more heart medication. Your partner needs a new asthma puffer.  You can't get any news about what is happening. Even if you have some form of food left you have no way to cook it now.

What the fuck do you do?

Ah, don't worry.  The government will sort it all out soon.  Don't bet on it.  They are probably most of the reason it happened in the first place.  Of course they are simply a reflection of society so it is all your fault too.

I repeat, without expletive this time and in all seriousness, what do you do?

I will tell you what most people would do.  They would panic.  They would go out and steal what they needed if they could find it and in not too short a time, when they have become desperate enough, they would be prepared to injure and/or kill to get it. Public safety would devolve into how well you could protect yourself or how prepared you are to beat the shit out of someone else.

This is not a pretty picture.

Of course, those who had the foresight to prepare for such eventualities or those who had been told about such things and had listened and also taken some action to make ready just in case, would be in a much better position to get through (survive) the initial holocaust that would ensue if even just some of these conditions prevailed.  Please don't think that I have listed all of the possibilities for systemic failure above.  I am sure you are capable of adding your own items to the scenario given some thought. This I urge you to do.

I have personally, by and large, taken steps to prepare for just this type of mayhem. Steps that you can also take will be discussed next.  

I Need To Think About My Future

What? What sort of future does a 68 year old man expect?

You may well ask. And I may well answer, because I am continually evaluating my position in life, what is going on around me, where the world is heading.  This is something that I recollect doing as far back as I can remember.  It is second nature to me.  Am I unusual in that regard?  I don't know but I suspect that a majority of people's thinking and outlook are shaped by events of their past, by what is happening to them today, just perhaps by things they need to do tomorrow and, only if they are pushed from a driving necessity to do so, by what they may have to face any further ahead than that.

So, I isolate myself to be among a select group of people, perhaps self-selected, who have an interest in the far future.  I tend to think that this self-selected group of forward thinkers are also members of that sub-group of humanity who could be described as self-educated. Having taught themselves to think outside of the normal and limiting range of thought patterns that a standard formal education would influence folk to use.  There is no doubt in my mind that I am not normal.  This does not influence me to think that I am better or superior to other people, just different.  ...but I digress.

I repeat, what sort of future does a 68 year old man expect?  Only a few generations back in the past I would expect to have been physically dead for some time by now and this holds true even today in many areas of our modern world.  As it is, I have a Mother who in about a month will reach the age of 99 years.  She is still living independently in her own home, with some outside assistance, far away in my original home city of Lincoln, England. It could be said that I have some long life genes in my physical make-up and potentially around another thirty years of good living ahead of me.  I do not indulge in any dangerous sports such as paragliding.  Never have as a matter of fact.  I stay well away from large, fast flowing or deep bodies of water to minimise my chances of drowning. I have never suffered a major accident causing physical harm nor any debilitating disease or illness except for one situation that I will explain in a moment.  In the last decade or more I have not even had a runny nose or severe headache.  I put a lot of my fortunate physical health down to a mostly healthy lifestyle, (generally) good eating habits (I am a vegetarian) and also to avoiding hospitals, doctors and any form of medication as far as possible.  I have also practised for some years Qi Gong and Reiki for the personal health benefits that they can bring (until recently that is, something that I must get back in to as a more regular practise).

My Setback

There has been an exception to my generally rude good health, as I mentioned earlier, which has put a cloud and possibly a limiting factor on my future expectations of maintaining that state.  This is how that came about.

For a number of years I consumed, as an exclusive substitute for dairy milk (as I consider it to be not healthy for human consumption), a particular brand of soy milk which I will not name here.  For some of those later years the manufacturer of that soy milk (allegedly) altered (drastically increased) the iodine content of the product (also allegedly at the request of an Australian importer of the product, purely for marketing purposes).  The (alleged) result of this action was that a large number of consumers in Australia suffered various conditions, mostly involving Thyroid Toxicosis in some form.  I was, am, one of those alleged victims.  The matter is currently before the courts as a Class Action.

I was hospitalised for a couple of days with this condition which manifested with the symptoms of Rapid Atrial Fibrillation (wildly fluctuating heartbeat) until the cause was diagnosed and medical action taken to control the situation.  I was to remain on various medications for the rest of my life I was told.  Fuck that, I thought and determined to get myself out of that untenable situation as quickly as possible.  Two steps I took.  Gradually, over a period of several months, I reduced the dosage of each of the four medications I was prescribed, replacing Warfarin by Low Dose Aspirin, until I was eventually left with only the regular daily Aspirin.  I didn't mind that and continue to take it daily as a blood thinner.  Because my system was at a very low ebb as a result of this condition I consulted a master of medical Qi Gong and after only a few clinic sessions was back on my feet.  The situation has however left me still with an irregular heartbeat, low stamina and a tendency to perspire profusely from even minor physical effort. I have learned to live with that as being much preferable to any alternative.

This all happened three years ago.  I still expect that with a positive attitude and getting back into regular Qi Gong practise and Reiki self-treatment I will gradually improve my health to something like normal or better than may be expected for a person of my age.  I retired from work within six months of these events because I had lost the appetite, desire and to some extent the physical ability to manage a full time occupation.  Overall I am very happy with my situation.  Let's talk about that.

My Current Situation

So, I am: 

• retired  -  happily
• healthy  -  reasonably, and better than could be expected
• independent  -  I have lived alone for the last ten years
• prepared  -  visualising possible futures has led me to equip myself for various eventualities
• isolated  -  I live rurally, 'far from the madding crowd' (Thomas Hardy), by choice
• saddened  -  by what my generation has inflicted on itself, its environment and its descendants
• heartened   -  by the beauty of nature and its cycles of renewal
• uplifted  -  by life and the eventual prospect of its continuity in whatever form in the boundless universe of endless possibilities

But before we get too carried away, I need to deal with the here and now and the immediate future, whatever it may hold.

My current situation is generally very satisfying.  I own no land or property, by choice and partly by necessity.  As a by-product of that, I also have no debt, which is a comforting thought.  Yes, I have a credit card which I am usually in a position to pay off immediately on those few occasions that I need to use it.  

I live an increasingly simple life, travelling little and infrequently.  I still own a petrol driven motor vehicle, necessary due to my remote living and inability so far to fully feed myself from my immediate surroundings but aware that such luxuries may not be available or affordable to rely on in the near future.

I am in receipt of a government aged pension, partly from Australia and partly from the United Kingdom.  I also receive some allowance for previous military service in the UK so all in all I am comfortable enough to say that life is not usually too much of a struggle to make ends meet.  Conversely, I am by no means living in a state of wealthy extravagance either.

For the last two years I have lived happily as a tenant in a rented property situated near the bottom of a deep gully with a dirt road and just enough spare land for me, with my recently acquired limited capacity for hard labour, to play with experimentally using knowledge that I picked up on a permaculture design course just before I retired.  That has been a useful and beneficial experience, enabling me to some extent feed myself from the land though the full fruit of my labours will not mature for some years yet.  The setting is ideal for me.

"So, what's the problem?"  I hear you ask.  "Sounds like you got it made".

Yes, I could live like this happily for a long time, perhaps for as long as I've got.  But there is nothing so certain as change and there is a great deal of uncertainty from living year by year on a 12 month lease as a tenant. The owner of the property I rent has recently suffered a health issue that prevents her from continuing her chosen career and consequently needs to sell the house.  She has been good enough to advertise it as an investment property with a ready income source.  But of course there are no guarantees as to who may eventually buy it or what their intentions may be as to its use.

This gives me cause (one of several, which I will discuss shortly) to start to think about my future.  I still have almost a full year of lease to run as some sort of security of tenure for that time so there is no immediate rush to act.  All may be well for me to continue living here for many years yet but I don't wish to arrive at that end of lease point and face the prospect of living with a month to month prospect of needing to up sticks and move on at short notice. That is the basic situation.

Reasons To...

Aaaaaagghh!  Sometimes memories are best left forgotten.  Typing the above sub-heading suddenly brought this dreadful dirge from the late '70s to mind.  If you have 5 minutes to waste you could still find something more useful to do than listen to it.  (Icy-y ss-shudd-d-er-rr. Exit, stage left.)

Perhaps it would have been better for me to have titled this section 'What If...'.  No, I will leave it as it is.

Back to the subject. I have outlined my basic situation and mentioned that there are other reasons (causes) for me to consider the future.  Here are some of them.

At the time I retired from work, apart from my recent illness, the world was deep in the throes of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) and  I was acutely aware (still am) of the fragility of the banking and finance sector of the economy.  Nothing has changed to alter that situation. In fact as time goes by it only becomes clearer that the world economy is operating literally on borrowed time. Debt time. More debt that can ever be repaid except by more and more debt.  That would not have mattered at an earlier time but in a system that relies on economic growth to sustain its operations, when that growth falters or stops, the whole unstable house of cards will tumble.  We are now irreversibly entering such a period.  

Why irreversibly? You surely can't have failed to notice the earth resource constraints that are looming ever larger as time goes by? Can you? Or the growing concerns that we have already overstepped our use of such resources to our peril from uncontrollable climate effects? Can you? You can't have failed to notice that global economies are struggling to maintain even a small amount of economic growth and in fact many national economies are going backwards? Can you?  You can't have failed to notice the high rates of unemployment around the world? Can you? You can't have failed to see the cut-backs in business investment and business failures due to people not spending and having to cut their margins to the bone in order to make a sale? Can you? Well, those are just some of the reasons why the era of economic growth is rapidly coming to an end.  Oh, I forgot to mention two extra billion mouths to feed in the next twenty years, assuming we last that long.  

  

What concern was all of that to me?  Simple.  I was on a daily basis watching my mainly equity based superannuation nest-egg shrinking.  To counter this, two years earlier I had stopped adding to my equity accounts and put all further contributions, both government and personal, into a cash account.  This didn't gain me very much in terms of interest but at least it was not shrinking.  I quickly determined that if I was to have anything worth saving I needed to get my money out of the superannuation system as quickly as possible. The only way to do that was to retire. So I did and instead of rolling my savings over into some other investment I banked it into a high interest, internet based, instantly accessible savings account where it has been earning me reasonable interest ever since and from where I can easily withdraw it if needed ie. when the banking system takes a dive or if I need to convert it to precious metals or something like that.

Having taken that action, I knew that I had secured my future as best I could.  While receiving government payments in terms of aged pensions, I was not totally reliant on those handouts. This is important because even with the best of intentions (and when we talk about governments, that can't be guaranteed), when a government has no money, because it has no income, because its tax base has disintegrated, because there are no jobs, because trade and industry has collapsed, because there is zero growth in the economy, there will be no government handouts. This week. Next week. Next month. Next year. Period.

Of course, when things get that bad, money will very quickly become worthless anyway. But for a time, those with cash, and only cash, will be able to eat.  Until the food runs out, that is. And with the just-in-time delivery system of operation that is in effect now, in three days, a week max, there will be no food to buy, no matter how much money you have. Scary? Damn right. Cause to think about the future? Even if only part of this occurs? Damn right.

That is just one major reason/cause to think ahead. Some preparation for these possibilities is obviously called for. The wise will take heed.

You may begin to see the reasoning behind some of the life choices I have made in recent years.

What else?  As if that isn't enough to be going on with.

I have decided to continue this discourse in one or more separate posts.  That way I can publish my meandering thoughts whenever I run out of fresh ideas or I am forced to take a break for some reason.

Hope, and History

Only once in a while, sometimes in a long while, do I come across intelligent, mature writing that inspires and resonates with thoughts and ideas that feel like they belong somewhere deep inside myself.  I just read an article that fits this description on the blog TomDispatch.com, written by Rebecca Solnit.  

Now, I don't know a whole lot about Rebecca Solnit other than that she is a writer, so I don't know if I would agree with all of her views (though her name sounds familiar so I may have read other of her work somewhere) but if this article is a good example of that work then I should urge myself to discover some of her books. 

The article I want to share here, and urge for it to be read, is titled 'Too Soon to Tell: The Case for Hope, Continued'.  This is a 10 year later follow up to her first essay for Tomdispatch which turned into the book Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities, since translated into eight languages.

A quote from the current essay is I think quite remarkably illuminating: 

 'Hope and history are sisters: one looks forward and one looks back, and they make the world spacious enough to move through freely. Obliviousness to the past and to the mutability of all things imprisons you in a shrunken present'. 

I am so impressed with this that I intend to add it to my list of favourite quotes.  

In today's world where conversation is shaped and dominated by sound-bites or short catch-phrases, we tend to identify ourselves with and glibly hook onto such simple word pictures which have the appearance of marketable validity and value but when the surface is scratched a little are found to be actually quite limiting or in some cases even stupid and dangerous.  One such quotable quote, or a derivative of same, is 'Never look back.  It's not the direction you are headed'.  How short sighted is that. It shows a complete disregard of history and our place in time, something I have mentioned elsewhere as it is a favourite subject of mine.  

My usual counter to this frivolous statement is 'We cannot know where we are going unless we also know where we have come from'.  History adds time and space to our one-dimensioned present.  The 'Now' is a very important concept but too much focus on the 'now' without the benefit of a valid context, past and future, since every 'now' was, is or will be one or both of those, is utterly without purpose. 

There is much to commend this article.  The thread is woven around those people movements, that Rebecca repeatedly though not repetitively refers to as part of civil society, which were in times past, many of them more recently, born out of hope.  A hope based on actively pursuing the changes necessary to the realisation in some form, of their dreams. A hope for a better future for, quote: 

"...the world, for you, for us, for generations unborn, for species yet to be named, for the oceans and sub-Saharan Africans and Arctic dwellers and everyone in-between, for the whole unbearably beautiful symphony of life on Earth that is imperiled."  

Rebecca moves on to talk about the present with the latest news that, quote:

"...we (just) reached 400 parts per million of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere, the highest level in more than five million years. This is terrible news on a scale that eclipses everything else, because it encompasses everything else. We are wrecking our world, for everyone for all time, or at least the next several thousand years." 

She still values hope as necessary to the picture.  A starting point, quote:

"Think of it as the match but not the tinder or the blaze."

So, there is a place for those who would form that tinder and fan that blaze.  We should welcome them not think of them in terms of, well whatever our current thinking is of those who question the way things are and actively propose alternative strategies for change. Those who get out of their comfort zone to do things that may in the past have made us feel uncomfortable about what they are doing and possibly who have given us reason to deride them for rocking the established and proverbial boat we are reclining in. Civil society owes all change, great and small to those people. 

While I think I have a good grasp on the possible range of outcomes that lay ahead for civil society, neither I, nor you, nor anyone else no matter who, can know exactly what may eventually transpire or the precise triggers or agencies that bring about the conditions which will be affecting us or our descendants in years to come. 

With Rebecca, I am sure that surges of unstoppable action backed hopefulness on our part may play a vital part in the direction of our journey along that path.  Will they play a deciding factor in the outcome?  Too soon to tell.  
 

Duality In Pisces

I have been thinking wistfully about what I could write on Meanderings sometime soon as it has been a while since I did so.  It has to be something of a personal nature that expresses my inner thoughts, because that is what I wish this particular site to be about.

Something came up.

I was asked today if I believed in the duality in Pisces.

Now, let it be said that I do not follow Astrology or put any great weight on the substantiveness (having practical importance, value, or effect: Encarta dictionary) of the fortune telling capabilities of Astrologers.  I think people tend to pick and choose what they want to hear from these sources to provide a level of comfort or minimal discomfort for their ego.

Spiritual work and Philosophical studies that I have done in the past, mainly some time ago now, has left me with a belief that, logically, there are likely to be subtle influences on all matter within the Universe brought about by the proximity of large bodies of matter such as planets and stars.  By subtle influences I mean something akin to the gravitational effect these thing have, though I am prepared to accept that it may not only be the influence of gravity.  I think that it would be generally accepted that all matter in the universe is gravitationally affected by, and exerts a gravitational effect on, all other matter in the universe.

Having said that, back to the duality of Pisces.

I am a Piscean.  Birth Date: 17th March.

I like being a Piscean and I think that I am quite typical of that group of people.  Here is what Wikipedia has to say about the personality of the Piscean:

Although there is no scientific basis for characterizing personality traits from date of birth, traditional Western beliefs assert that Pisceans are perceptive, emotional, and reasonable. Pisceans are also said to desire reasoning for all actions, and are always capable of giving a reason. Notorious for being highly sensitive, they are also said to be desperately afraid of ridicule, as the sign is deemed "unfortunate." Pisces are a mutable sign, which makes them susceptible to change. Similarly, Pisces is classified as a "common sign," making them flexible and vacillating in nature. As a bicorporeal sign, astrologists believe that events in Pisceans lives are prominently repeated, suggesting that they may marry several times and that misfortunes never come singly. However according to astrologer Max Heindel *, the Piscean's "good fortune also comes in multiple." 

Conforming to the traditional astrological belief of the dual nature of the Piscean, in part seeking enlightenment in the "unseen realm," they are said to be "dreamy, mystical, and artistic." Edgar Cayce, an alleged psychic, has been cited as an example of such a Piscean. It is also been said that Pisceans are the quietest among the twelve zodiacal signs, and that they are good workers. In line with their association with feet, Pisceans have been described as being "never quite satisfied when sitting," preferring to be standing or walking.

*  I studied the Astrology of Max Heindel at one stage.  He takes a more pragmatic approach to the subject than the regular flimsy fluff put out by most Astrologers.  I downloaded his manuals and the annual charts still put out (I think) by the organisation he once formed, The Rosicrucian Fellowship.  It all became too difficult to follow by my poor tired brain so I gave up.  Maybe I will try again when I have nothing else to do.

Pisces is the last sign of the zodiac.  Here is what Risa D'Angeles says about that in her Astrology column in the Santa Cruz Good Times:   

Pisces contains all previous eleven signs. Pisces is the two fish, connected by a silvery cord. One fish is the personality, the other the Soul. They represent the duality all of humanity experiences. Being both animal and divine, we experience simultaneously feelings of attraction and separation, passion and despair, suffering and bliss. 

So, the two fishes of the Pisces symbol represent that duality.  Unfortunately, many depictions of that symbol incorrectly have those fish swimming in opposite directions.  This is not how it actually appears in the astral configuration in the night sky.  There, one fish is swimming upwards while the other is swimming in the same direction but level along the line of the ecliptic.   Some might say, and I tend to like the idea, that this represents the dual aspect of Pisceans in that they split their energies between pursuing the more spiritual aspects of life as well as the more mundane things of the physical/natural world.

All of that, take, for whatever it is worth to yourself.

This year, 2013, there is another unusual aspect of duality in March, covering the Piscean zodiacal period.  It relates to the path of the planet Mercury through the skies as viewed from Earth.

Mercury entered Pisces this year by turning retrograde from Feb 23 and will go direct (change direction) on my birthday March 17.  It will finally catch up to where it left off on April 6.   So, for half of the period it will be going in one direction and for the second half in the other direction.  That is a duality if there ever was one.  I wonder if I will feel any different influences from the 17th?  I certainly have been feeling as though I am not making much in the way of progress for the last few weeks.

If you don't understand the concept of retrograde and direct motion, the first thing to know is that planets do not change their direction of travel.  It just appears that they do to viewers standing on another planet.

It is easiest to see it like this.  The solar system is like a number of small balls (planets) travelling in circles around a large ball (the Sun) in the same direction as each other.  They all travel at different speeds and because of this, from time to time, when viewed from the surface of one of the balls, another ball may appear to be going backwards.  It isn't actually going backwards but it looks like it is to the viewer.  A little further around the circle the backward travelling ball will appear to start going in the right direction again.  It will eventually catch up to the place where it appeared to first be going backwards and then everything will appear to be going as normal again.  It is all smoke and mirrors really but it seems to hold great significance to those involved in Astronomy.

I will finish where I started.  Perhaps there is some subtle difference in the subtle influences from such apparent differences in motion.  I wouldn't be surprised, but I wouldn't lose any sleep over it either.