Devin: the Roxy we know and love signs her posts “Raku.” This is a different one.

Yeah that’s right I’m the Roxy you don’t know and don’t love (not yet anyways)

But I’ll post as Roxy UK from now on so everyone knows just which Roxy it is.

Nukes are a concern. But, no point in worrying. I’m relying on people continuing with their current posturing. Basically, just hoping that they all remain balless until there isn’t any fuel to shoot them anymore. Other than that, just hope that you’re far enough away from the strikes. Radiation disipates to non-lethal levels very fast. Although collectively, survival would be a questionable proposition, especially if the composition of the atmosphere is sufficently altered. Personally, I’m ignoring this possibility because there isn’t much that I can do about it. So, just prey that our leaders are scared enough to not attack, because they’ve already proven themselves stupid enough to use them.

Hunting is a fun hobby, but hell I’ll forget to do that when I get hungry–or perhaps the game will be scared off from the massess raiding whats left of the wilderness when the food suppyly gets short. Chickens, goats, and raising rabbitts isn’t good either–since once again it really doesn’t compare with foraging.

Peak oil will mean starvation, although the good news is only 99.5% or so will die. We can watch the green movement chase its tail for the next 5years+?? Trying to manipulate energy ratios that involve oil production anyway most of the time.

Maybe the real issue is, its difficult to have one ‘foot’ in civilization (jobs, starvation hanging over our heads etc) and one foot tentatively testing out the self-sufficiency ideas–foraging (while hoping to not get killed during the mass die off and the chaos that would ensue following) and while picking berries, and eating dandelions I can hope that whats left of the power groups don’t let too many nukes fly, fighting for whats left of the black gold? Hmmm, I seriously need to find a cool myth to believe in, or have some sort of religious revelation, since the last few years of preparing for ’stuff’ has been quite the downer “)

Well, at least I have a full stomach currently, it may not be freedom–but at least it provides my the glucose & glycogen to keep me truckin’ until the good times/bad times begin?

In terms of some of the responses to my previous comments–
My intent was to rely the fact that peak oil etc, will have a much smaller effect on some pockets of more self-sufficient areas. Contrary to popular belief 1st world nations don’t provide all the food to every 3rd world country. Last I heard 1/3rd of the world still did no have sanitation, plumbing, or electricity in their homes. India is a good example, of a country in the process of “progress” although the majority of its inhabitants live in squalor with no modern tech’s.

Being poor does not make someone self-sufficent, or unreliant on civilization. It simply makes them bottom rung slave of the system. There is no place on Earth that can farm sufficent food for it’s populace without the use of oil-based fertilizers and oil-based machinery (even if this machinery was simply built and maintained with oil). Peak Oil doesn’t just mean that we cannot drive, or that all of our electricity will go away. It means we starve to death. Indeed, India could never support it’s populace without imports. Most third world nations cannot. It’s a simple issue of over population, too many people on too poor land.

Ultimately the term “more self-sufficent” is null. If a place is not completely self-sufficent and isolated the collapse will take them as well. Third world nations are utterly reliant on first world nations as surely as first world nations are utterly reliant on third world nations. First world nations supply a sizable amount of thier food (although not all), most of their machinery, medicine, and their seeds (I consider this last to be particularly discusting).

In response to starvation being ‘held over the heads of its inhabitants’. I see this as partly true at best. Certainly at times throughout history some civ’s have definitely used food control as a power control. And sadly, this may happen again in the US/UK to some degree, who knows? But the process of LIVING itself, holds many things over our heads. Borrowing from physics it appears will all live in a state of superpostion of possibilities to some degree. Looking for a more healthy, equal, and self-sustaining culture is admirable & may become a neccessity for continued exisitence (well, it will eventually–but the time frame is still a bit shaky) but the certaint outcome remains elusive in the world.

If one day civilization disappeared what would you eat? If you decided that today was the day. Today I’m abadoning civilization. Would you know what to eat? Probably not. Most people can’t even get this far. Without civilization, without farming, most people believe that they will starve. They cannot leave civilization because they won’t be able to eat. I’d call that holding starvation over our heads. “Fine, you can leave. But, what would you eat? Food only comes from farms, you know that.” It’s a great fiction. Food is culturally defined. Civilization says that only farming can make you food. How could you leave? This is what I mean.

America for example, originally fighting for “liberty” became one of the harmark slogans/ideals. I just find that few people are will to take a stand anymore. Modern culture has softened us up so much that we “feel” we have no real choices. Although Techno-Civilization may provide dissonance that causes chronic stress, unhappiness etc. it also provides lots of short term hedonistic pleasures that make it easy for most to hand over their liberty to it.

In terms of some of the responses to my previous comments–
My intent was to rely the fact that peak oil etc, will have a much smaller effect on some pockets of more self-sufficient areas. Contrary to popular belief 1st world nations don’t provide all the food to every 3rd world country. Last I heard 1/3rd of the world still did no have sanitation, plumbing, or electricity in their homes. India is a good example, of a country in the process of “progress” although the majority of its inhabitants live in squalor with no modern tech’s.

In response to starvation being ‘held over the heads of its inhabitants’. I see this as partly true at best. Certainly at times throughout history some civ’s have definitely used food control as a power control. And sadly, this may happen again in the US/UK to some degree, who knows? But the process of LIVING itself, holds many things over our heads. Borrowing from physics it appears will all live in a state of superpostion of possibilities to some degree. Looking for a more healthy, equal, and self-sustaining culture is admirable & may become a neccessity for continued exisitence (well, it will eventually–but the time frame is still a bit shaky) but the certaint outcome remains elusive in the world.

Nietzsche argued that the “will to power” is the essential driving force of every human being. I disagree; I think it’s more akin to a mental illness that afflicts those who have been powerless and have never known freedom–they want power, because it’s the closest thing to freedom they’ve ever known. All the great dictators were powerless, and often abused as children.

I disagree, the will to power or in my opinion and that of some other theorists, William Glasser, M.D> for example propose Power as one of the basic biopsychological needs. Although it may be very true that power is a mental illness of sorts, and often the extreme pervasions of power come from people who often had a vacuum of feeling control & power in the lives–this does not in itself mean that the desire for power is not a basic drive. It appears to rear its head in heirarchal systems–but this is merely a product of s system that enables power to mass within a few. The limited opportunity for the ‘will to power’ to manifest itself in the extreme is likely another good argument for a self-sustaining foraging system. History presents so many examples of the striving for power over others, that
its hard to say it hasn’t been a main driver in many events within civilizations. I suppose we don’t have a long history of non-heirachal civ’s to look at to reflect upon how things may be without the rigid systems in place.

Anyway, I’m getting long here…Thanks for all your comments and I look forward to reading more about the Methods of Freedom as they are presented.

Civilization doesn’t always hold ’starvation over people’s head’, but rather the choices in how we live & how much we conform to our particular system determine that.

What do you mean choice? I have to conform or I get in trouble with my civilisations policing force. If I don’t pay my taxes they will punish me, if I don’t have a proper permit for whatever it is I want/need to do (be it fish/drive/live in a house) they will punish me.

My civilisation has full time policing force to keep me repressed and in line and make sure I economically support the system and whatever vision it’s fullfilling (in this case never ending economic growth). And I can’t leave it because it is policing everywhere. If I try and build myself a home in the woods it will be illegal and they will arrest me, if I kill a deer for food, it is illegal unless I have a very special permit and they will arrest me (UK). Therefore they bind me to their way of life through coercion and policing.

Once you have come of age in a foraging society, should you decide that something is wrong with that society and wish to leave it there is no physiological imperative that keeps you from doing so. You already have all the knowledge that you need to survive, at least until you can connect with some other group out there.

In this way, if a society becomes dominated by one person or one group over the rest of the people, the rest of the people can be like “screw this” and walk away.

In this society, however, power and domination are entrenched because even though we would like to leave this society, we do not have much of an ability to do so.

I would also like to say that being dependent on people you know and trust is completely different than being dependent on millions of people you don’t know OR trust. Removing dependencies is not fully possible, but if I am to be dependent on someone I’d like it to be someone who I know I can depend on.

- Devin

I’ve been pondering this for a day now, and I think you are looking at it backwars, Jason.

I think that being dependant on the society as a whole — ie treating society ‘as a whole’ — is exactly where we are now. No individual person has control over whether I eat tomorrow, or the next day, etc…

Yet, within my family, we are certainly dependant upon one another. At different times, the dependancies have been stronger in one direction or another — certainly Ian has been more dependant on Jim and I than vice versa — but over our lifetimes, it all evens out.

I think, in a tribal setting, it is the same way. No one person has absolute dependancy on any other single person, but they do have shifting dependancies with each other individual in the group. And they CAN because they all have strong interpersonal relationships with each other (even in the case of a ‘bad’ relationship, it is still a ’strong’ relationship, if you know what I mean).

Prisoner’s Dilemma is a good argument for all this — but prisoner’s dilemma with infinite iterations, not one off. In an infinite iteration dilemma, there can be no ‘abstract force’ that everyone is relying on — it really is the certain knowledge that I do you a favor today because I KNOW that tomorrow you will return the ‘favor’. If it was some mythical group then certainty could never be achieved.

Janene