Entries Tagged 'Localism' ↓

I have been re-reading James Howard Kunstler’s “The Long Emergency” recently and I recommend you read it, if you haven’t already.  Kunstler is a big thinker and, unfortunately for his career, is not on board with the happy-face mood of our country.  His is not the message America wants to hear at this moment, but if you want to see around the next turn of fate to protect yourself and your assets, you need to get familiar with what he has to say.

For a prophet of doom, Kunstler is a lot of fun to read — a big improvement over the Old Testament prophets.  I think you could summarize his attitude to his writing with the phrase, “You’ve got to laugh to keep from crying.”  And he will make you laugh!

He writes somewhat like Hunter S. Thompson, but describes the real world with humorous insight rather than his personal hallucinations. Continue reading →

The reason that European nations have better health is not because they have “free” access to doctors occasionally.  It is because–for the most part–they don’t eat the crazy American fast food diet.  Europeans eat real food.  They often walk rather than drive to places they need to go, because they live in walkable cities–not in a suburb linked to their place of work by an hourlong drive to go ten or twenty miles.

Health care is our American obsession because we refuse to do the things that are conducive to health(eat more vegetables and fruit, less meat and dairy products, more whole grain products, less liquor and beer, fewer sweets and soft drinks, cut out tobacco entirely, and get regular daily exercise), so we need a backup plan to pay for the expensive medical repairs we’re sure to need. Continue reading →

Certainly I’m not wildly optimistic but embrace what Shaun Chamberlain, author of “The Transition Timeline“, calls dark optimism, that is, being “unashamedly positive about what kind of a world humanity could create, and unashamedly realistic about how far we are from creating it today.”  FULL ARTICLE

What?  I can go bare and not be arrested?  Who says I must cover up?  Isn’t that a violation of my rights?  Well, I’d like to know who has the extra-rights and privileges to tell me what fashions I must adhere to and how much of me must be covered.  I’m just wondering if I must always wear a hat, and if it has a bill, must I wear it to the front or the rear?  What about trousers, even shorts?  If I run down the street wearing neither, would I be arrested, and if so, what law would I have violated?  Continue reading →

Watching C-Span this week, I happened to take in what money Obama was proposing to spend as part of the Stimulus. One of those items was money to improve the availability of education for all who desire a better education, but can’t afford it. It reminded me of the rapid growth in cost to obtain a good education. And coupled with this proposal were two stories in the local paper the past few days concerning contributions of some college students.

It seems that the communications satellite to be put into polar orbit by India in April was designed by college students and their instructors at Madras University in India. Another newspaper story carried the information that a new method for detecting breast cancer had been developed by students and instructors at the University of Arkansas. The detection method analyzes the chemical composition of tears collected from the eyes to detect telltale indications of the breast cancer. Now that’s money well spent and knowledge and experience almost impossible for young minds to get in any other scenario. Continue reading →

My latest book, Sacred Demise: Walking The Spiritual Path of Industrial Civilization’s Collapse has been released and is available for purchase. Below is the book’s foreword written by Sarah Anne Edwards, Ph.D. and co-author of Middle Class Lifeboat. She also teaches at Pine Mountain Institute and manages the Eco-Anxiety Blogspot. Sarah has gracioulsy consented to write the foreword for my book which is an emotional and spiritual roadmap for navigating the decline of industrial civilization. I extend my deepest gratitude to Sarah for her insight into the book’s message and for her eloquent description of it.  FULL ARTICLE

Rarely in the specialized milieu of industrial civilization does one encounter a Renaissance man or woman-someone who is well-versed in a wide spectrum of disciplines and who can expound upon them in writing that is both articulate and engaging. So when I discovered Mat Stein’s phenomenal When Technology Fails: A Manual For Self-Reliance, Sustainability, and Surviving The Long Emergency, I immediately contacted the publisher, Vermont’s own Chelsea Green, for a review copy of this fabulous tome on preparing wisely for the end of the world as we have known it.  FULL ARTICLE

This past week the New Yorker published “The Dystopians” by Ben McGrath, by whom I was interviewed back in October and who allowed me to make an appearance in the article with a brief mention of my forthcoming book. Sitting with this piece for the past seven days has been unsettling, not because I personally wanted more air time, but because of the article’s paucity of references to the female perspective regarding the collapse of civilization. Although I greatly admire Dmitry Orlov and James Howard Kunstler, and while I feel camaraderie in particular with my friends in the Vermont Independence movement, Rob Williams and Thomas Naylor, I found “The Dystopians” to be an appallingly white male extravaganza.  FULL ARTICLE

While all eyes are on Washington, D.C. to see what comes out of the Obama Administration and the new Democratic Congress, a different political scenario is playing out in each American state. Under the American federal system, states vary quite substantially on a number of public policies. Some states have income taxes and others do not. Some states ban smoking in all public places, workplaces, and restaurants, and others do not ban it at all. Continue reading →

Few Americans are aware that Vermont, the fourteenth state admitted to the Union in 1791, was not a colony like the others; it was a pre-existing independent republic spontaneously created by its residents who rejected the authority of neighboring colonies, particularly New York which had the strongest claim to its territory.  In its fourteen years of formal independence, beginning in 1777, it very nearly fulfilled the textbook image of a society created voluntarily by free persons living in the state of nature — a favorite motif of seventeeth and eighteenth century social contract political philosophers.  FULL ARTICLE