A couple small points I’d like to make:

First, make sure you aren’t confusing agriculture with all forms of cultivation, it’s been awhile since I’ve read “The 30″, but I don’t believe it takes cultivation as a whole to task. If memory serves, criticism is levelled pretty squarely at monocultures in annually disturbed fields.

Second, even though it may seem counterintuitive, the historical record seems pretty clear that the typical hunter/gatherer spent less overall time seeing to their needs than a typical agriculturalist or industrialist.

One last thing I’d like to add about “less productive but hardier crops”, especially in relation to “hunter/gatherers vs agriculturalists”, is that I’ve encouraged a very large patch of lamb’s quarters in my yard. It produces abundant greens thru the summer and requires almost no work from me (most of that work consists of harvesting and preparing it for meals). So, here is a plant that is at least as productive as the nearest domesticated equivalent (spinach) and also considerably hardier. Additionally, my cultivation efforts are minimal, providing a situation that feels more like foraging than gardening. I bring this up to illustrate that sometimes we set up situations in our minds that seem to require trade offs, and in doing so we miss win/win opportunities. I think this is something that we often overlook, and I think paying more attention to finding win/win opportunities could go a long way to helping us all rewild.

1. Peak oil, peak uranium and peak steel will ultimately make motor transportation and telecommunications impractical.
2. In combination with climate change, they will make agriculture more difficult and less productive.
3. The world population will have to shrink, especially in major cities, and then stay constant thereafter.
4. People will have to eat a lot less wheat, corn and rice.
5. People will have to rely more on locally made products, which may mean a lot fewer electronics.
6. Federal governments, multinational corporations and federated churches will lose much of their power, and many may have to split.

However, I don’t agree that all agriculture is unsustainable, or that foraging would necessarily bring us the greatest health, shortest work week or happiest life. Specialization of labour does have benefits, especially if your aptitudes aren’t well-rounded (e.g. you’re on the autism spectrum, as I am). There are things music simply could not have done without a place to plug in an electric guitar. And by the time everyone had re-learned how to safely and reliably get our food as hunter-gatherers, it’s entirely possible natural climate change (such as the start or end of an ice age, or even the effect of the sun’s expansion) would render that knowledge obsolete.

I expect that the “collapse” will be gradual and relatively orderly in many places, affecting the birth rate as much as the death rate; that we’ll still have towns (small by current standards) that are largely autonomous and isolated; that foraging will become an option, but not be the only or most popular one; that many professions will continue to exist but move to an apprentice system; that medicine will adapt to the lack of petrochemicals, but remain secular in many places; and that we’ll grow less productive but hardier crops (with techniques such as composting and crop rotation). There is a baby here, and I see no need to throw it out with the bathwater.

As for a unified humanity, I disagree. Humans don’t have the neurological capacity for mass society. It fundamentally defies our ability to handle it. If humanity is unified, then every human will be overwhelmed and stressed to the breaking point because of that. We forget what that kind of broad communication costs us: when we can communicate with everyone, then we can’t connect with anyone. Deep relationships cost us time and energy, and if we’re spending that time and energy to maintain many shallow connections, then that takes away from the deep connections we can form. The flip side of a unified humanity is the end of community, and even sanity. It’s the civilized ideal, yes, but it’s also madness that utterly neglects human needs. That’s hardly unexpected; after all, the chief problem is that we have such a hard time comprehending such a scale in the first place. So I think we’re in for the exact opposite trend: greater divisions. We need to remember that the other side of community isn’t just the intimacy of who’s in, but also the bulwark of who’s out. You can no more define a community simply by inclusion any more than you can see someone’s nose simply with light, without any shadow, or play a symphony without some amount of silence. Pure light is blindness; pure sound is white noise; pure unified humanity is insanity. To have a community requires both the intimacy of pre-conquest consciousness and the ugly side of tribalism.

There are many disappointments and frustrations in life. Some people gravitate toward the quick fix, the easy way out, to the course of least resistance while others refuse to give in, focus on positive goals, and roll up their sleeves and get to work.

Habits, good and bad, and addictions seem to have a form of inertia or a life of their own. It sounds so very easy, but people have to get involved in positive habits and in a positive momentum rather than taking the easy way out and giving in to harmful addictions.

Most people are smart enough to know what is harmful and what is good for them. Surround yourself with good things (healthy eating habits, proper sleep, contact with positive friends and relatives, doing helpful things for others, expressing thankfulness for the things you have) and start eliminating actions and behaviors that you know are negative (staying out until 2AM on work nights, spending money on alcohol or drugs, surrounding yourself with people of questionable character, eating mainly junk food, focusing on partying rather than on self-improvement, etc).

A healthy or positive habit starts with one action. Take that first step and see how positive behaviors and thoughts feed on one another. Sit down and ask yourself what you can do to make your life more fulfilling and joyful. Then develop a plan of action and implement it. Stop making excuses and giving in to your weaknesses. Get off your lazy butt and do something positive for others and for yourself. You just might find out more healthy and good things about yourself than you ever gave yourself credit for. And you might even start to create some meaning in your life that is worth the time and the effort.

DenMan7
http://www.About-Alcohol-Addiction.com

btw ¡CONGRATULATIONS! for your marriage. I already listened the podcast. How I did? . . . internet archieves.

Isn’t it?

“and those of us who wish to find a new way to live should be able to find that the beginning of collapse has left enough space for us to do just that. By 2012, curiously enough, the door of heaven may well be open for anyone who wishes to pass through it and create the future.”

So, is it here where you say what must we do now? because, I don’t have enought to buy an island yet.

Thanks and Congratulations again.