The Tragedy of the Commons
http://dieoff.org/page95.htm

and

CCTV cameras are being equipped with softwear
http://www.headheritage.co.uk/uknow/features/index.php?id=69

Pursuant to the ongoing conversation I would like to add: “Creating babies today is like renting rooms in a burning building, to our children no less!â€? – Les U. Knight at http://www.vhemt.org I personally have played the biting fly on the lazy horse of Athens for most of my life but I can no longer own the burdens for the choices that others continue to make. If people persist in starting fires in the proverbial building, I am going to eventually want to evacuate the burning building when it becomes apparent that my continued efforts are futile. I am officially resigning as the world’s fireman… “You can lead humans to the slaughter but you cannot make them think”. – Roy Harper

Greetings Survivalist,

I’m seeking to become involved with a small community of survivalist-minded people.
It has been difficult finding sincere folks that wish to do little more than muse and rail about the overshoot, collapse and die-off, or perhaps just evade the reality of this subject altogether. I suspect that those who are already successfully involved in survivalist communities are prudently flying under radar and not advertising their location and MO with internet smoke signals. My girlfriend and myself are making initial preparations for transitioning. Our vision is to acquire rural land in a warm, agricultural-friendly setting and form community with 5 – 20 other intelligent, genuine and environmentally aware couples that have a similar inclination for preparedness and sustainable living. Preferably couples who are transitioning without a kid-centric community in mind.

We embrace preservation of our planet and celebrate responsible reproduction. I have been sterilized and we are both childfree. We have many practical talents and abilities (I am a master electrician, plumber and gardener). We are content to tread lightly on this planet, live this life well and then die out. I also believe that we can choose our families in this lifetime. Adopting existing beings into this family unit would be encouraged as an ongoing group process. I have been a deep green activist for over 25 years and have focused most of my energies on population containment this last decade. I believe our nest is being irreparably fouled and all attempts at conservation and sustainability are being rendered useless whilst human densities continue to spiral out of control. I can no longer ignore the inescapable conclusion that a collapse of contemporary civilization and a culling of the human herd is imminent. The Earth’s immune system will seek to return balance back to the Earth at the expense of our overly fecund genus. I have been largely unable to discourage mindless breeding amongst even my own friends and family. I don’t expect I will be able to save them and their many offspring from continued cycles of mass consumption and reproduction, even when found choking on piles of their own excrement. Most humans will unfortunately not make it through the other side of this cataclysm, which will be the point of this cleansing exercise. Everyone simply cannot be saved.

I hope and expect we can enjoy this new journey of simple and self-reliant living. There is obviously much more to discuss in such an arrangement and it must begin with honest conversations. Please feel free to contact me if you are already involved in sustainable community, serious about transitioning or have similar thoughts.

Regards, Zimba

zzzimba@satx.rr.com

The main reason is one that felled the “Back-to-the-land” movement of the late 60’s/70’s and it is simple- jobs. Even if you have stored up some wealth and are going in on a farm with some firnds/family, there is still a great need for ongoing finanical inputs for…

mortgage, taxes, food, energy needs, clothing, medical and dental care, supplies, etc.

In order to have that incoming money, some of the community members must work, even if they have pared their expenses down to a minimum.

When the energy descent takes place, rural communities will lose the massive influx of state and federal dollars that helps prop up their infrastructure in terms of roads, county jobs, schools and police/fire/medical care.

It also takes a great deal of energy to transport supplies, fuel, electricity and food to these locales. For that reason businesses will be pinched and will shut down. Most folks will move towards the built up areas where the jobs are and those rural survival communities will feel very isolated indeed.

Many of those lifeboat community people will lose their jobs or find it impossible to commute long distances to get available work.

So building a rural community? I’d have to call it a very naive response to the problem…strategically and financially unsound for all but the most wealthy.

Consider how this debate might seem to, for example:-

A Cuban Farmer
A resident of Baghdad or Kabul
A car mechanic in Soweto
A Niger Delta fisherman

I could go on………..

I’d suggest that there are just two broad but quite distinct outlooks in play -
the first being Isolationist –
I neither know nor want to know my neighbours -

and the second being Integrationist –
I know that my wellbeing not only depends on communal wellbeing,
but a serious part of the former is actually my joy in the latter.

Notably, this pair of contrasting outlooks goes to the heart
of the manic anthropocentrism that drives our lethal ecological incompetence.

It is perhaps worth noting that Zachary appears well aware of the advantages of the Integrationist mindset,
without committing to dependence on patently unsustainable urban population densities.

Regards,

Lewis

Population has increased incrementaly along side our energy availablity. When that energy begins to become less and less available, our population will decrease in tandem.

Thanks!

i’ve enjoyed this back and forth – thanks to zachary for the emotional maturity to rescue a respectful conversation from the wreckage of ridicule.

a couple aspects of the conversation seem a little off to me – but maybe could be brought in now that a certain tone of decency has been established and shared.

first – the tone of disconnect with the planet seems strong, even among the discussion of how to move “back to the land”. much of this discussion seems to involve humans striding heroically around an inanimate planetary stage. trapped as i alsom am within this mindset i can still recognized that this alienated way of perceiving is conditioned by our current system of production – my hope is that the back-to-the-landers might be able to slowly reconnect to an understanding of human life as intertwingled with the rest of the folks on the planet. i like derrick jensen’s suggestions about trying to restart dialog with trees and rivers and places as a means to reconnect.

this disconnect relates to the second aspect i’d like to question – the regretability of collapse. some scenarios of collapse (such as “die off”) are scary and tragic – but i’m not sure that this way of life we are currently living is worth extending. i feel like there is a parallel to be made now, in the matrix-world many of us mostly inhabit, to the perception of europeans after the 1st and 2nd world wars. i believe there is a widespread sense of futility, falseness, anomie, and boredom – in some ways it really is the age of the simulacra. bush is holding hands with a sheik and pronouncing Kazakhstan a “free nation” while claiming to be attempting to spread democracy with bombers and tanks in iraq. on the subway i see some people reading celebrity magazines, and others are reading mass circulation newspapers or sex-novels, or playing video games on their cell phones. people are killing time, as well as killing off most of the ecosphere. has anyone read MT Anderson’s “Feed”? is the collapse of this bored, boring, and ecocidal civilization something we should work to prevent, or to accelerate? i guess the answer partly depends on another question – what would likely come after?

one might regret some of the consequences of a collapse without regretting the collapse itself. i think i’m personally more disturbed by a vision of our matrix world spinning forever into ever greater alienation and meaninglessness than i am by a tragic and reality-affirming collapse.

1. the crew knew there were enough lifeboats for only half the passengers, but did not inform the passengers. (The Powers That Be know about Peak Oil, but the managed mass media is silent).
2. the crew could have told all the men from the get-go to begin building expedient lifeboats from chairs, desks, rope, et cetera, but did not. TPTB do not tell folks the real skinny on Peak Oil. In both cases this was/is done on the premise of “avoiding panic.”

I’m doing what I can to inform my closest neighbors about Peak Oil and to be on the best of terms with them. We are close to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in a rural and isolated area. Like the author, I’m planting fruit trees, expanding my skill sets as fast as I can, and storing things that my neighbors will need to help feed themselves. I’m trying to follow the advice of the sage Hippocrates, “First do no harm.” I cannot see how any of my actions will impact negatively on anyone else. I hope they will have a beneficial effect on my neighbors in the coming hard and lean times