The fact that we are so doing, to my mind, points to a chronic failure of vision.

In this regard, I highly recommend Theodore Roszak (Ecopsychology; The Voice of the Earth; Where the Wasteland Ends) which inspired me massively when I read them first.

I came across a review of a book which might be of interest called “Resilience, Bounce Back From Whatever Life Throws at You”. (review http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/lifestyle/article-23780662-how-high-is-your-resilience-quotient.do )the author has apparently created a Resilience Quotient index based on psychometric testing.

The review suggests that the quotient is similar to the IQ for measuring intelligence. I find that some of societies most destructive ideas are propagated by people with high IQ’s, so personally I am not so sure of the value of such measures.

I did like Chris’s metaphor in the happiness lecture pointing out that oysters only producing pearls when thoroughly irritated! Resilience can come from miserable beginnings.

Rob Hopkins wrote an awful review a year and a half ago, criticizing a documentary called Blind Spot. I don’t know why he did, maybe he was in a bad mood while writing the review.

However, IMO this is one of the best movies on peak oil/societal collapse around. Almost nothing that is related to this subject is left out: consumerism, AGW, technofix-culture of make belief, debt, Jevon’s paradox, but most important of all, the psychology behind the whole thing that is keeping the status quo as it is, is explained by psychologists. Unlike other documentaries such as What a Way To Go or End of Suburbia that discuss the effects of Peak Oil, Blind Spot shows the root of the problem: the dominance of the economic concept of infinite growth and the effect it has on our culture and psychology. No other documentary on peak oil (and I have seen almost all of them) does this as good as Blind Spot.

The talking heads in this documentary are amazing: William Catton (from the famous book ‘Overshoot’), Joseph Tainter (a huge name in the societal collapse community), James Hansen (the nr 1 climate scientist), David Korten, Richard Heinberg, Jason Bradford (from The Oil Drum), Derrick Jensen, Bill McKibben ( from the book ‘The End of Nature’) and many more.

All of this combined with some fantastic shots that symbolically accompany what is being said.

That’s why I’ve decided to upload a torrent of the documentary (amazingly it wasn’t there yet). Have a look for yourself and perhaps you’ll agree with me that Rob Hopkins’ review was way off: http://onebigtorrent.org/torrents/9177/Blind-Spot

And if you liked it, consider buying it or donate some money to the makers. These people should be making a lot more films like this one, because obviously they get it, from start to finish.

I found you through the Dark Mountain site, which I was drawn to because I’ve been writing and teaching about darkness — a positive view of darkness — since the 1980′s. In researching the coal Black Madonna of European Catholicism outside of Zurich, at Einseideln, the great Benedictine Monastery, I discovered that the “blackening” or “the darkening” was the first stage of the medieval alchemical process.

So Transition Culture and the Dark Mountain fit together beautifully for me as we move into the process of transformation. Will we make the changes we need to make, who could possibly know? I’m just grateful that someone finally stood up and said “this isn’t working… let’s stop fooling ourselves,” as the editor of Ecology (blanking on names, just came across all this past week) did as he discussed with his colleague and bingo here we all are.

Speaking of Bristol, do you know my beloved friend, Chloe Goodchilde and her work “The Naked Voice”? You might want to… singing definitely keeps the energy going…. and has stoked the fire of many a massive change!

All best to you,

China