7 April 2006

Chicken Little Meets the Ostrich

Toby Hemenway is a full-blown permaculture guru, and an Anthropik reader, but I really have to take issue with his latest essay, posted to the Energy Bulletin today, “Apocalypse, Not.” I’m not sure how much of it is a response to Anthropik specifically, but it would be pure hubris for me to suggest that we’re alone in our belief that peak oil is, if not the sole assurance of our civilization’s end, at least a contributor to the “perfect storm” brewing in the near future. Hemenway makes the argument that collapse is neither imminent, nor even terribly likely, because we’ve weathered such problems before. With all due respect, I think the problems we face are being underestimated in this analysis, and the problems we have solved, overestimated. I think the basis of Hemenway’s analysis is to misunderstand the classes of problems we face–in short, there are problems, and then, there are problems.

Hemenway tries to sum up my case for collapse with this:

Catastrophists often point to all the other incipient disasters we face besides Peak Oil—global warming, aquifer depletion, soil loss, active volcanoes near cities, killer storms—and say “Take your pick; one of them is bound to get us.�?

This is only a partially fair summary. In fact, the real cornerstone of my argument was presented in theses #14 and #15. At the end of thesis #14, I wrote:

Tainter's graph of the diminishing marginal returns on complexity

At point B₁C₁, the marginal returns of complexity reach an inflection point as they near the point of diminishing returns (B₂C₂). Between B₁C₁ and B₁C₃, a complex society is at increasing risk of collapse. It is at B₁C₃ that collapse actually occurs. The costs of complexity relative to its benefits are simply too high, and substantial numbers across the society begin to see benefits to “dropping out” of the complexity of that society. In ancient Rome, we might see the baugaudae or the Allamanni as examples of this trend among the lower classes; various landlords who essentially “seceeded” from Rome as their wealthier analogues. In the contemporary United States, we might see the first stirrings of such signs among the Hippies; currently, we might see echoes of it among permaculture enthusiasts, voluntary simplicity advocates, and of course, primitvists. We might even see the open source movement itself as a reaction, trying to maintain the investments in technological complexity by creating greater simplicity in administration and information processing. We might find an upper-class echo of this behavior in the kind of elite resignment that Peggy Noonan discusses in her 27 October 2005 editorial for the Wall Street Journal, “A Seperate Peace.”

It is at this point that collapse occurs, because the costs of complexity have become so high that the society is no longer willing to put forward any further investment in it. Tainter discusses the effect of energy subsidies–such as fossil fuels–which can extend the curve, heighten the curve, or even allow one curve to follow another. But these merely modify the situation; they do not change the basic fact that complexity is subject to diminishing marginal returns, and thus, any society that pursues greater complexity as the answer to every stress–that is, any civilization (see thesis #13)–must eventually collapse. The question is not if, but when.

Every society faces problems, and as an adaptive system, societies develop means of answering those problems. When a society structures itself to maximize greater complexity as such a problem-solving response, to the exclusion of all other strategies (i.e., when that society becomes a civilization–see thesis #13), it locks itself into a pattern that ultimately can only end in collapse. Once its level of complexity passes the point of diminishing returns, its ability to answer problems becomes weaker and weaker. The pace and intensity of these problems do not increase; it is our ability to solve these problems that begins to decrease. The barbarian horde that swept over the Rhine and conquered an enormous swath of the Western empire in 409 CE was smaller than many of the barbarian forces that the Roman Empire had, in previous centuries, contained with relative ease. Though dealing with drought was one of the primary râison d’etre for the Maya cities, it was ultimately a prolonged drought that did them in. Though one can deterministically predict collapse within a given timeframe due simply to the marginal returns curve of complexity, predicting the specific problem that may prove to be the proverbial straw to break the camel’s back is almost impossible, as I said at the beginning of thesis #19:

Predicting the proximate cause of collapse is impossible, though, as we have seen, both environmental problems and peak oil present serious threats–precisely the kind of threat that has toppled civilizations in the past. On their own, however, such proximate causes are probabilistic. Peak oil may mean the end of civilization; or, perhaps we will be able to transition to some alternative. Environmental problems may destroy the most basic necessities of civilized life, or perhaps we will solve them, instead. What makes collapse a certainty, rather than a probability, is, ironically, the very thing that defines civilization in the first place: complexity.

Complexity is a function of energy, and this is where peak oil becomes so important. As John Michael Greer points out in “How Civilizations Fall: A Theory of Catabolic Collapse,” [PDF] catabolic collapse, like anabolic growth, is a self-reinforcing process.

A society that uses resources beyond replenishment rate (d(R)/r(R) > 1), when production of new capital falls short of maintenance needs, risks a depletion crisis in which key features of a maintenance crisis are amplified by the impact of depletion on production. As M(p) exceeds C(p) and capital can no longer be maintained, it is converted to waste and unavailable for use. Since depletion requires progressively greater investments of capital in production, the loss of capital affects production more seriously than in an equivalent maintenance crisis. Meanwhile further production, even at a diminished rate, requires further use of depleted resources, exacerbating the impact of depletion and the need for increased capital to maintain production. With demand for capital rising as the supply of capital falls, C(p) tends to decrease faster than M(p) and perpetuate the crisis. The result is a catabolic cycle, a self-reinforcing process in which C(p) stays below M(p) while both decline. Catabolic cycles may occur in maintenance crises if the gap between C(p) and M(p) is large enough, but tend to be self-limiting in such cases. In depletion crises, by contrast, catabolic cycles can proceed to catabolic collapse, in which C(p) approaches zero and most of a society’s capital is converted to waste.

In other words, it’s not enough to just “break even” with a steady state. A steady state is not possible. Any significant lack of growth is sufficient to initiate a self-reinforcing process of collapse. It is our commitment to complexity–our investment in it–that keeps civilization afloat more than anything else. If our confidence flags and people begin to withdraw their commitment–their investment–then the situation proceeds very quickly from the status quo to “apocalypse.” The long decline of the Roman and Byzantine Empires was due to the slow attrition of diminishing marginal returns; the model of catabolic collapse is not to be found in Rome, but in New York. On 24 October 1929, the “roaring twenties” were still roaring. By 29 October, the Great Depression had begun. Keynesian, Monetarist, and Austrian economists blame the Great Crash on “overspeculation.” Investors put more into the stock than it was actually worth. As some investors sold their stocks, the value of the stocks went down, and it became evident to even more that they were not getting a good return. A trickle became a mad rush, as everyone struggled to not be the last one out. Such is the nature of catabolic collapse, as well. It’s hard to say which problem we’ll encounter first that our diminished problem-solving capacity will be incapable of solving (though it seems increasingly likely that Katrina may have been the first; we may be too far beyond the point of diminishing returns to ever rebuild New Orleans, however vital it may be as our primary Mississippian port), but whenever and wherever it occurs, we do know one thing: everything is in place for a catabolic collapse. Sit on a powder keg long enough, and eventually, it will explode.

But Hemenway’s argument rests on two major fallacies. He claims that the problems we face now are no worse than the problems we have faced in the past. The first fallacy is the most obvious: that statement is simply not true. He confuses classes of problems. The second fallacy is what we have just addressed: that the problems need not be any worse than anything in the past–in fact, they can be even less of a problem–if our capacity to answer them has diminished.

Hemenway opens with an example that never ceases to irritate me, regardless of who uses it: Y2K. Used now to paint anyone as a “chicken little,” invariably such use neglects the largely unknown history of the problem. It is now the poster-child of needless scares. As Hemenway puts it, “the most unnecessary ’sky is falling’ panic in my lifetime.” Others have complained of the enormous cost “wasted” on the “non-issue” due to sheer fear-mongering. As a computer scientist, this is a slight to my profession, ignoring one of our greatest achievements. Y2K was every bit the crisis we presented it as; it was because of all that money spent, and more importantly, the years of frantic labor on the part of my fellow techie brethren, that made Y2K a “non-event.” The reward for our effort is the popular perception that it was all a false alarm. It’s a thankless job; when we succeed, you don’t even know we did anything. It’s only our screw-ups that warrant your attention.

Y2K is an excellent example to open with, because it belongs to a class of problems we are most familiar with. These problems have technical solutions. That solution may be difficult, but it is possible. Throw enough manpower at it, and you’ll have an answer. The usual retort of, “People used to say we’d never be able to fly, either!” is another example. Throw enough manpower at it, and you’ll have an answer. These are not the class of problems we’re talking about.

The problem of Peak Oil is not one of oil disappearing overnight, or even completely. It is a problem of scale. Hemenway points out the many ways in which we adapt, and of course he’s right. That is not the question; the question is, will we adapt in time? Can we? Hemenway points out that humans are a “just-in-time” species:

Humans are activated by crisis, and often do little until it arrives. We waffle and deny as a bad situation builds, such as during Hitler’s repeated aggression in Europe in the late 1930s. Then we pass a trigger point and leap into all-out efforts; we are galvanized into war or its equivalent. Look at aircraft production in World War Two: In 1939, the US built 180 airplanes per month.(8) In 1940 we made 1600 each month, and by 1944, 8000. That’s a 4500% increase in 5 years. I’ve not heard any White House statements about “the war on oil dependence,�? but when they come, I am certain we’ll make a similar effort, even if it is one of learning to make less rather than more.

I have no doubt he’s right. The question is, will our reluctance to do anything until it reaches the crisis level lead us to wait until it’s too little, too late? Once again, Hemenway points to easy, technical problems by comparison, as we simply threw all our effort behind a specific cause. It is also significant that WWII was an era of increasing, rather than decreasing energy. This is one of the key ingredients of the looming crisis–not only the scale of mobilization required, but the fact that if we wait until it is a crisis (we already have, as one would easily predict), we will have to do so with less energy every day. That is the problem of peak oil; not whether or not we’ll eventually mobilize, but whether it will be too little, too late.

It would be hubris to suggest that such a crisis could not possible destroy our civilization, when it has already destroyed so many civilizations before us. As I explained in a previous article, “Peak Wood,” we are by no means the first civilization to face a crisis like this. It is a regular killer of complex civilizations. Its victims include Cahokia, the Hohokam, and the Bronze Age civilizations of the Mediterranean. As I wrote in that piece:

Every civilization eventually falls prey to diminishing returns. The problem of Peak Oil–like “Peak Wood”–is just one dimension of this much larger, intractable problem, inherent to the nature of any complex society. What separates extant civilizations from extinct ones is whether or not a less attractive alternative existed, which could become the basic strategy for a new iteration in the cycle of expansion and exploitation. But eventually, miracles run out. Eventually, the deus ex machina leaves us to sink or swim on our own merit. The crisis of Peak Oil is precisely the kind of crisis that has always collapsed civilizations, and if history is any guide, then it seems very likely that we have finally run out of luck, and the time has finally come to pay back 10,000 years of debt.

So, the thought that Peak Oil may result in collapse does not rest on the six premises Hemenway outlines at all; that is, in fact, a straw man. One need only believe that depletion will rise higher than our society’s adaptibility is capable of keeping up with.

Hemenway makes an argument about demand, and points out the basic economic fact that price is not only set by supply, but also by demand. This is the common Cornucopian reply to the question of Peak Oil: as supply contracts, prices will rise, which will simply extinguish demand. This entails a distinct lack of imagination, in my opinion, as to what “extinguishing demand” might entail. With a human population far beyond its carrying capacity already that can only be fed with petroleum-fueled, industrial agrictulre, a rise in the price of oil must be carried over into a rise in the price of food. That will increase the percentage of the population that cannot afford food, and that increases the desperation of a society very quickly. Because of the unequal distribution of wealth in modern civilization, the percentage of the population that starves from rises in the price of food rises much more quickly than the price itself, as the largest numbers of people are to be found in the lowest levels of affluence. Rise in violent crime, or even riots, would be an effective way of extinguishing demand–by lowering the population, violently. Carry this trend on long enough, and one begins to see the familiar scenario of collapse emerge. As John Robb pointed out, the existence of the state is predicated on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs:

In Maslow’s view, people must meet basic needs first, before they can consider more esoteric needs. This makes sense. You can’t worry about job advancement if you spend your entire day on the hunt for fuel to heat your home or food for your table. … The ongoing assaults on basic services (physiological and safety) has collapsed the legitimacy of the Iraqi government. People ultimately blame the government and the US for the lack of services and not the guerrillas.

The legitimacy of the state–the existence of civilization–is predicated on its ability to provide for the most basic needs of its citizens. As an anonymous proverb puts it, “Every society is only three meals away from revolution.” This would successfully extinguish demand–by setting off the self-reinforcing process of catabolic collapse described above. If the system of civilization is incapable of providing for basic needs, increasing numbers of people will look outside the system for those needs. This encourages still more to do the same, rather than continue their dependence on a failing system–a system that now fails more and more, as more and more people abandon it. It escalates–just like a run on an over-valued stock.

Hemenway is absolutely right that as Peak Oil progresses, we will become more efficient and waste more, but waste does not constitue nearly so large a proportion of our energy use as so many people think. Efficiency will buy us a few years, no doubt, but our need to continue growing or risk collapse in an age of declining energy makes for an inevitable rendezvous where, no matter how efficient we become, our complexity will have to go down. When that happens, the process of catabolic collapse begins.

Hemenway also mentions a point that deserves more explicit coverage here, though it is an unspoken assumption in all of my writing: culture is adaptive. It is itself an evolutionary adaptation, and forms a system unto itself that adapts to changes in the world, and changes within itself. A change in one part of a culture will cause cascading changes throughout the whole culture: a kind of memetic ecosystem. Culture will try to adapt to the changing energy landscape of the post-peak reality. That is not in question. The question is, will it be able to? Hemenway rests his argument on the premise that the depletion rate will be relatively mild, and if he’s correct in that, then I’m certain that culture will adapt. But what if that premise proves untrue? What if depletion is very high–say, 10% or more? In that case, we may be looking at half as much oil in just a decade. Will culture have enough time to adapt in that circumstance? Probably not.

Here, again, we run into the wall of the ultimate cause of collapse: diminishing marginal returns. For us, cultural adaptation means invention, or bureaucracy, or some other incarnation of greater complexity. Yet, our ability to do so is exactly what’s diminishing. Its effectiveness as a strategy is diminishing, and since it is a function of energy, even our ability to implement an increasingly useless strategy is diminishing.

I am not convinced that Peak Oil will certainly mean the end of civilization–but I do believe it is a possibility, a possibility that needs to be considered. What ensures collapse is not peak oil, but the diminishing marginal returns of complexty. The proximate cause is nearly impossible to predict, but peak oil is a prime candidate. Hemenway has his facts right (for the most part), but assembles them in almost the opposite argument from mine. Hemenway concludes with this:

High unemployment could be transformed into fewer people making, buying, and needing to earn money for unnecessary widgets; spending less time at jobs they hate; and producing, alone and in community, a larger share of what they actually need—which does not take 40 or more hours a week. It is an opportunity for the role of economics in our lives to shrink, and for an expansion of time for the many things money cannot, or should not, buy.

Humanity has reached the stage, finally, where basic survival is not in doubt for many people. We have not yet grasped that the struggle for survival is essentially over, and we have overshot. Instead of noticing that as a species we no longer need to labor all our waking hours for the basics of food and safe shelter, and to fight off disease and predators, we cannot get off the survival treadmill. So we just keep making more stuff, rather than looking up, taking a breath, and enjoying all the wonders possible from being a conscious, intelligent animal that has mastered survival. Perhaps Peak Oil, and a return to a time when resources are dear and labor is abundant, will remind us that there is much more to life than the manufactured desire to have more toys. Perhaps we can lose our small-minded obsession with getting and spending, and finally grow into maturity as a species.

Aside from perpetuating the patently false, Hobbesian vision of prehistoric human life, what Hemenway describes as “not apocalyptic” is something I might have written myself–as a description of what collapse ultimately accomplishes. All Hemenway’s analysis really lacks is an understanding of how unlikely we are to bridge that process without suffering a great deal along the way.

Categories: Articles

Tags: adaptation, collapse, complexity, complexity theory, culture, peak oil, problem classes, problem solving, Systems Thinking

Comments

“Hemenway is absolutely right that as Peak Oil progresses, we will become more efficient and waste more,”

shouldn’t the more be “less” ?? Or is there some aspect of efficiency I’m not following here?

Comment by neighbor — 7 April 2006 @ 4:10 PM
You’re right, that’s a typo. Seeing all the buzz around Hemenway’s article put me in too much of a rush to get it out.

Comment by Jason Godesky — 7 April 2006 @ 4:15 PM
Leave it to me to whack a hornet’s nest and then disappear. I’ll be in Poughkeepsie with Giuli all next week and won’t be back until after Easter, so don’t expect much in the way of, well, any evidence that I’m still alive during the interrim. The rest of the tribe will be around to hopefully hold down the fort while I’m gone.

Comment by Jason Godesky — 7 April 2006 @ 4:36 PM
Your flaw is in the equivocations and partitions of ideas underlying your concept of complexity.

Forcibly imposed and over-extended structure is different from dynamicism. Technology (and even infrastructure to a much lesser extent) can be used dynamically or/and as a conduit for the nihilistic social idiocy of hierarchy.

A dynamically adaptable society/civilization can be infinitely more complex than the intractable blunt structures within an entrenched society. That constant dynamic complexity, like the ecosystem’s dynamic complexity, is sustainable. Simplistic social mechanization is, of course, unsustainable because it functions by putting restraints on complexity and thus adaptability.

Comment by wil — 7 April 2006 @ 5:10 PM
I don’t think you’re understanding what is meant by “complexity” here. If you don’t want to read Tainter’s whole book (Collapse of Complex Societies), then there’s a fair enough synopsis (I think) in thesis #14, linked above.

Comment by Jason Godesky — 7 April 2006 @ 5:15 PM
G’day from Oz,
(Not Jason Godesky)

Toby Hemenway has been missing some critical things - Jamie once a permaculture activist has moved on to the higher philosophical standard of Nature Farming of �?岡正信 Fukuoka, Masanobu. Here in this group message copied at the bottom below is one of many examples from that group of Jamie articulating clearly himself why we need clearer philosophical starting points than Hemenway apparently has ever provided. Jamie has been a professional philospher at Oxford if i remember rightly his earlier posts about himself, he focused on continental philosophy such as Heidegger, knows better than to be seduced by mechanistic ‘western’ so called philosophy derived from Descartes or Copernicus, and came to Fukuoka Masanobu through that philosophical angle. Thus he is an authoritative critic of philosophy of any less standard than Fukuoka Masanobu or Heidegger, etc.
For a fine writing more recently than quoted below by Jamie see:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/fukuoka_farming/message/5317
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/fukuoka_farming/message/5339
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/fukuoka_farming/message/5353
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/fukuoka_farming/message/5369

�?岡正信 Fukuoka Masanobu himself articulates very clearly that Permaculture is just a feelgood mistaken continuation of the false Copernican, Cartesian, etc. based western philosophy(s), in his books and in USA conferences he was keynote speaker at over the last 30 years, with Permaculture’s Bill Mollison and with Wes Jackson. In his book “自然�?�還る”(Shizen ni kaeru) “The Road back to Nature” by �?岡正信 Fukuoka Masanobu also clearly points out a much more important disasterous problem & mistake with projects such as Permaculture and mechanistic ecological science - that they are the Alibi - the barely funded tokenistic attention to the problem - the so called democratic western establishments’s superficial allowance of dissent such as amongst academics, farmers & indigenous peoples - The ALIBI by which the status quo rolls on - The status quo of depraved decadence, of unnecessary wars which the minority in power have started to impress their power & intimidate their victims both internally and in external countries - the juggernaut self-destructive ‘western’ establishment - The fatalists - The burn-(itself)-out ‘western’ culture(s) (slow or fast burn-out depending on which case - which country).
Please be opening eyes in the USA by reading and sharing these crucial exposes:
Yale Bonesmen engaged in macabre business.
http://www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=1065807370
http://www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=1086105944
http://www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=1096412153

The Christain bible, i forget the full quote and context (please respond with help here), says and my friends and network often repeat this example amongst our group to keep the faith: “Speak truth to power” doing so is liberating while from without doing this it may seem too risky and daunting, but it isn’t - what can the powers that be do when mass population speak the truth to them - there is always a tipping point at which the minority in power yield to the truth when enough of the majority voices speak that truth out.

There is a chapter there in “The Road back to Nature” by �?岡正信 Fukuoka Masanobu called ‘Organic Farming and Ecology are Self-Defeating’:

From “自然�?�還る”(Shizen ni kaeru) “The Road back to Nature” by Fukuoka Masanobu.
”
Organic Farming and Ecology are Self-Defeating
If mistaken agricultural methods are responsible for the decay in European land, then unless those errors are rectified, both the rapidly declining nature and culture of Europe will be beyond help. It is generally thought that adequate measures are being taken to stem this decline, but is this in fact so?
In Japan as well, the issue of environmental conservation came to the fore in the early 1970’s. With this, word of natural farming and organic gardening spread. But in spite of the high expectations made of it, organic gardening is not very different from scientific agriculture. In its present form, organic gardening is simply a return to animal-based farming and to the use of manure and compost. Because organic methods are essentially the same as those traditionally used in Japan, these can be of little help in restoring true nature. Not only that, if anything, such methods assist in the destruction of nature. True, organic farming does act as a brake, but since the brake is acting upon a broken wheel, this only compounds the danger.
If I may be quite frank about it, although organic farming appears to serve the cause of natural conservation, on reviewing these developments over the past decade or so, this has not been the case. I began by selling my mandarins directly to consumer cooperatives in Tokyo about ten years ago; maybe another ten years before that, some people i know got together and organised an organic farming association. Compared to back then when things were just getting started, it would seem as if the natural food and direct distribution movements have made some progress. But this has really caught on only among a small number of people. During the past decade, instead of moving toward the preservation of nature, the world and society at large has - just as i feared it would - continued on a course of relentless destruction. Nothing has been stopped. People living in Tokyo have not approached closer to a natural diet; if anything, their diet has become more unnatural - even anti-natural. In the space of these ten years, the assault on nature has proceeded at an accelerated pace, producing wanton destruction of the land and further debasement in the quality of man’s diet. We can afford to wait no longer.
I think that the problem lies in people’s willingness to believe that, with the clamour over natural diet, the development of organic gardening, and the slowing - however small - in scientific agriculture, things have been getting better. It is my belief that the arrogance - and failing - of scholars lies in their thinking: “If there is a right and a left, then a balance can be achieved and things worked out; as long as ecology exists and we have ecologists around, it will be possible to save nature.” This is precisely what I mean when I say that halfway measures won’t do.
I had an opportunity once to meet Professor Akira Miyawaki of Yokohama National University at a general meeting of the agricultural cooperative associations in Japan. Professor Miyawaki reported on pollution damage in Cryptomerias along hiking trails at the base of Mount Fuji, stressing again and again that “nature must be protected.”
After his talk, I spoke up: “Professor, if you think that the plant ecologists can protect the ecology of Japan’s mountains and forests, you’re sadly mistaken. It’s not the plant ecologists who created sacred groves of the local village shrines, you know.”
The professor had a strange look on his face. I learned why later when I had a chance to read a book he had written; I found that he makes frequent mention of these shrine groves. I suppose that he expounds on ecology knowing full well the limits of plant ecologists and argues strongly for a revival of those groves. The problem is that the general public, taking false comfort in the thought that the professor and his colleagues will protect nature for them, becomes an unconcerned bystander in the destruction of nature.
Let me illustrate with an example. People who are told: “There’s no one around to treat you if you get injured - there are no doctors on this island,” are bound to take care of themselves. But try telling them: “We’ve got a surgeon and an internist on the island, so you can rest assured that you’ll be well taken care of should anything happen.” Do that, and people will cease to look after themselves. The more they hear talk of plant ecologists and conservation groups protecting nature and the environment, the less concerned people become about destroying nature. Now that we have environmental conservation groups in Japan and a national Environment Agency, it is as if people were saying, “Leave the fire up to the firemen and the arsonist up to the police.” With its fixation on tourism and leisure, the public is calling for more high-speed rods and bridges. It looks as if the natural destruction of Japan will continue yet for some time to come.
Riving the earth, halting the growth of deserts, and conserving the environment all can be achieved not by doing something, but by seizing an opportunity for restoring nature that requires nothing [more accurately translated: requires only becoming natural people and ‘doing’ natural living] to be done.
The sacred groves of Japanese village shrines grew into natural woods only because, calling the rocks and trees there gods, someone attached sacred straw festoons to these, saving them from the ax. The ax and saw are the worst; their appearance marked the start of the destruction of nature.
”

For example see from the following:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/fukuoka_farming/message/3009
”
> Does anyone have at hand “The Road back to Nature” by Fukuoka?
> Please find the section near the back of the book were Fukuoka talks
> about ‘Permaculture’ and Bill Mollison and write it up as a quote
> here so we can all get straight to the point!

i just reread the paragraph ” the 3 don quixotes” and he doesn’t say much about permaculture apart from his drawing at the end depicting bill mollison the blind and wes jackson the deaf riding backwards on don quixote donkey while masanobu is hanging on the tail and swinging back and forth .
all trying to stop that donkey from running widly over the cliff by returning to nature , but their efforts are all in vain.
he asked the audience :
then he drew President Reagan standing on the donkey neck and dangling a carrot in front of its nose .

one person replied:….
are you refering to something else than this paragraph ?.

What i am deducting is that Masanobu do stop trying to ride the donkey especially backward while the carrot is still hanging in front and attracting this crazy donkey to its own sabotage. he still try to stop it but without conviction and it doesn’t seem a confortable way of doing it (at least Bill Mollison made its place confortable

Comment by Jase — 7 April 2006 @ 9:06 PM
From Jase
Fixing the omitted parts (because of angled brackets in the original - Sorry!) of that last quoted message from wonderful natural food-growing practitioner & writer Jean-Claude. Again From:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/fukuoka_farming/message/3007

”
> Does anyone have at hand “The Road back to Nature” by Fukuoka?
> Please find the section near the back of the book were Fukuoka talks
> about ‘Permaculture’ and Bill Mollison and write it up as a quote
> here so we can all get straight to the point!

i just reread the paragraph ” the 3 don quixotes” and he doesn’t say much about permaculture apart from his drawing at the end depicting bill mollison the blind and wes jackson the death riding backwards don quixote
donkey while masanobu is hanging on the tail and swinguing back and forth .
all trying to stop that donkey from running widly over the cliff by returning to nature , but their efforts are all in vain.
he asked the audience : “what would you do ?”
then he drew President Reagan standing on the donkey neck and dangling a carrot in front of its nose .
” what is this carrot?.”
one person replied:” Money”….
are you refering to something else than this paragraph ?.

What i am deducting is that Masanobu do stop trying to ride the donkey especially backward while the carrot is still hanging in front and attracting this crazy donkey to its own sabotage. he still try to stop it but without conviction and it doesn’t seem a confortable way of doing it (at least Bill Mollison made its place confortable “raising quite a
following among organic farmers advocates thoughout Australia and the US”.

I have observed so often this phenomenon in many fields , somebody being in touch with a potentially revolutionary approach and washing it down to make
it honorable and acceptable ……

permaculture seems to me an attempt to makes scientific agriculture less obviouslly against nature but doesn’t touch the fundamental : the “need ”
for control.

IMO that is why Masanobu is into direct contact with the hopeless.
the bible said something about the meeks …..
we in australia or americas are way to confortable to renounce totally to the thrill of being in control.
and we have good conscience, we created permaculture as an alibi to continue the madness….

jean-claude
“

Comment by Jase — 7 April 2006 @ 9:19 PM
“Speak truth to power”

It doesn’t come from the Bible, it apparently comes from the Quakers.

Comment by Jason Godesky — 8 April 2006 @ 12:30 AM
With respect, I stand by my assertion. You’re defining the term to fit the use you want it to serve.

The entrenching of extended structures (informational, socialogical, material) is what’s being addressed but, by defining it instead as “complexity,” you’re using a two-definition trick to passively expand your dismissal of definition #1 to implicitly dismiss the broader definition #2.

So long as the complexity of consciously created structures are not entrenched but instead fluid, dynamic and organic they are sustainable. But you’re dismissing the choice/possibility of organically applying technological complexity. Un-entrenching complexity rather than abolishing it thus gets written off.

Comment by wil — 8 April 2006 @ 2:42 AM
I haven’t read Jase’s comments yet, so this is just to wil:

Technology is one facet of complexity, as I explained in thesis #14. I do not believe it can be seperated out from the others, since they are bound together, and none can rise or fall without the others close behind. I don’t think I’m lumping them together, rather, I think you’re splitting them too much. Whereas I have a lengthy defense of my position, and you have so far only asserted yours, and as my understanding is that shared by anthropologists who study cultural complexity (my understanding comes directly from Tainter, which is probably the most authoritative study of the matter so far produced) it seems to me that it is my argument that should be preferred, unless and until you can elaborate on why technology does not count as cultural complexity. Since that is the basis of your criticism, without a full defense, I’m afraid I have little option but to consider it dismissed.

Comment by Jason Godesky — 8 April 2006 @ 4:11 AM
It’s an interesting suggestion tucked in at the end there, that mass unemployment will lead to utopia as everyone realises that they’re screwed.

I remember once seeing a documentary from the 1950s, one of the ones about how by the 80s we’d all be living in moon towns and eating little pills. They said something very similar. They said that, as the need for labour decreased, we’d all have more “leisure time”. We do, of course; we just call it unemployment. If you’re working full-time, you don’t have time left for much else.

What do we do with our “leisure time”? We sit around, in poverty, getting sick, turning to crime, living miserable, short, brutish lives, you might say. Those who aren’t completely demoralised yet live in hope that this week, this month, things will be different; this will be the month we find work and become a real person again.

There’s nothing stopping the unemployed and otherwise excluded from putting together their own alternative systems now, growing more food, gathering more food, taking themselves outside the system, but they don’t - they’re hopelessly tied into the mainstream system and its vision. After the peak, I suspect it won’t be any different. A lot of people will die still waiting for the system to save them.

Comment by Vashti — 8 April 2006 @ 5:49 AM
The imagery of Chicken Little (CL) confronting Mr. Ostrich Head (MOH) is a great one. Couldn’t resiste and posted it to my site here

One thing not really discussed by either side is the risk versus reward equation. You know, multiply probability of outcome times values of the gain or loss. Let’s say for pure argument sake that it is 50-50 as to whether the Cornucopians are right (they’re not) or the Doomers are right (actually, it won’t be equally bad for everyone). If the Corny guys are right, we will have wasted D dollars trying to fix a problem that is not there. If the Doomers are right, we will suffer N x D in losses where N is multiplier effect for how bad the outcome will be relaltive to what it takes to try to fix it (an ounce of prevention). So which loss is the bigger one?

Comment by step back — 8 April 2006 @ 12:55 PM
Expected value. Or, if you prefer, an application of Pascal’s Wager? I tend to agree with you.

Comment by Jason Godesky — 8 April 2006 @ 1:02 PM
I’m not trying to seperate technology from complexity.

Rather I’m arguing that you’re using ‘entrenched extended structure’ as the definition of complexity and then, because technology is implicitly tied to complexity, you can simply define away any fluid, dynamic and organic nature to complexity/technology.

You admirably critique the first but it doesn’t follow that technology is only covered under that limited definition when the popular perception of complexity (ie #2) includes both.

…You’re right that I’m going to have to expand on this, of course. It’s just that it’s probably going to take a while before I can find the time to officially write out a thesis.

Comment by wil — 8 April 2006 @ 3:54 PM
Hey Jason. Just wondered if you ever read Thomas Homer-Dixon’s Ingenuity Gap. His basic question is do we have the ingenuity in society to solve what are becoming more complex problems in a world where people are becoming less inclined to believe we even have problems. Interesting read. You should check it out if you haven’t already.

Comment by Peter D — 9 April 2006 @ 10:57 AM
I guess I had higher hopes for a permaculture expert than I got from Hemenway in his latest article. His argument was incoherent, although I agreed with certain of his paragraphs, out of context.

Comment by Jon S. — 9 April 2006 @ 2:57 PM
This site seems to be in sympathy with the arguments I have posted at “The Oil Drum.” TOD seems to primarily be a techie haven where the tech fairy is alive and well.

Entropy wins. Either now, or later entropy wins.

I will continue to read this site and will probably post little because I do not like to be a “me tooer.”

Otherwise, great stuff.

Comment by Cherenkov — 9 April 2006 @ 4:31 PM
Either I’m learning to comprehend your language, or your writing skill has improved marketly.

Comment by Rick Larson — 9 April 2006 @ 8:59 PM
Peter D,
Something you said that is very intriguing:
Do we have sufficient ingenuity in our society to save society?

From my perspective, the biggest challenge that the “ingenuity” part of our society faces is how to organize human society so that it can detect the “real” problems and then overcome them. Clearly, too few a people see Peak Oil or Global Warming or other perils (population bomb) as being something worthy enough to make it onto the “Radar Screen”.

Karl Marx was a very smart guy in that he saw the shortcomings of capitalism and proposed communism as a possible solution. Communism failed big time. But the shortcomings of capitalism continue to remain unresolved. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and limited resources continue to be depleted at alarming and “growth-based” rates. Our profit-chasing capitalist machine simply continues racing toward the cliff even as Cassandra scientists cry out over the perils of Global Warming, Peak Oil, etc. Despite the knowledge of catastrophe a coming, no one seems to be able to steer the machine (the ship Titanic) towards a safer course.

I personally don’t see a better system than capitalism for organizing human behavior & have not seen alternate proposals that might work, given human nature is what it is. Scholars have looked at all sorts of government systems and found nothing that has the “answer” buried in it (how to establisg checks and balances that do the most good for the most people rather than the most good for the elite few). Until we humans come up with an ingenius way of organizing ourselves so that truth wins out over power, our ship of state will continue to steer itself for the iceberg.

Comment by step back — 9 April 2006 @ 9:01 PM
The reasons I find Hemenway’s argument more persuasive are two: 1. he has history on his side. Despite all the examples of societies collapsing that everyone here cites over and over again, history has largely been one of increasing material wealth and greater individual freedoms for larger numbers of people (before you jump down my throat, I didn’t say everyone, or even most people — I said larger numbers of people.) I know that’s part of the reason why you all think we’re on the path to overshoot and die off, etc., but if the past is any guide, Hemenway’s right: humanity as a species will figure it out, and overcome it. 2: the point you all never explain is, even if your b1, c1 - b1, c3 curve at the top is right, you have no way of knowing, really, where we are on that curve. You have a hunch that we’re either on the downslope or approaching it. And you can point to a lot of current events that seem to support your hunch. But people living at any point in history could probably point to developments that in their minds indicated that “the end is near.” Miniskirts, teaching evolution in the schools, etc. My point is, it’s ultimately an article of faith with you people. All the “theses” posted on this site have not convinced me that anyone knows what the highest level of ‘complexity’ for us is globally. Yes, we certainly are complex. But it seems to me that the true hubris is claiming that one knows that we can go this far, and no further. While you may well be right that we’re on the verge of the upper limits of complexity (I certainly can’t predict the future either), history points to the opposite.

Comment by Anonymous — 9 April 2006 @ 9:01 PM
A tribal system allows a group to organize itself without dependance on those with material wealth having power over those without. In a tribal system no one person owns the majority of the tribe’s output. That output is owned by the whole of the tribe.

I fail to see how old celbate men thinking that miniskirts are the work of the devil is in anyway relevant. The arguement in favor of collapse is manifold, and not reliant on a new fad. The lack of oil as an energy source without a viable replacement is a huge problem. The lacking of potable water is a huge problem. Shifting climate zones are a huge problem. The diminishing returns of our investments are a huge problem. That they are all happing at once makes it impossible to overcome. We have overcome problems before, but not on this scale. We overcame the Great Depression by the skin of our teeth, but we still had easy access to fossil fuels. We don’t anymore. Without that oil that could have been the end. Without oil and without sufficent water it would have been the end. Without oil or water, and with a population 3 times larger and a change in weather patterns it would have been unassailable. This is the situation we find ourselves in now. The argument is simple: Throw enough baseballs at a guy and one of them is going to hit him in the nuts.

Comment by Benjamin Shender — 9 April 2006 @ 9:17 PM
G’day from Jase in Oz,

Well, excuse me the primary quote from Jamie that i built up in my first post to this thread got cut aswell - i’m re-reading my writing & replies 2 days later today. So it’s posted below with the intro - build up - repeated aswell.

Cheers,

Jase
**********************************

>”Speak truth to power”

>It doesn’t come from the Bible, it apparently comes from the Quakers.

Thanks Jason Godesky for that.
************************************

G’day from Oz,
(Not Jason Godesky)

Toby Hemenway has been missing some critical things - Jamie once a permaculture activist has moved on to the higher philosophical standard of Nature Farming of �?岡正信 Fukuoka, Masanobu. Here in this group message copied at the bottom below is one of many examples from that group of Jamie articulating clearly himself why we need clearer philosophical starting points than Hemenway apparently has ever provided. Jamie has been a professional philospher at Oxford if i remember rightly his earlier posts about himself, he focused on continental philosophy such as Heidegger, knows better than to be seduced by mechanistic ‘western’ so called philosophy derived from Descartes or Copernicus, and came to Fukuoka Masanobu through that philosophical angle. Thus he is an authoritative critic of philosophy of any less standard than Fukuoka Masanobu or Heidegger, etc.

From:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/fukuoka_farming/message/1888

Jamie
Fri Jan 31, 2003
RE: [fukuoka_farming] We need clear information.
”
Hello glObe, I have not read Gaia’s Garden, though every reference to it
that has come my way has been positive, so my comments here should be
understood with this proviso. However, I have been fortunate enough to
listen to Toby Hemenway (through email) on another forum and a few personal
email’s and believe him to be a filled with good common sense.

However, (and I just bet that you knew there was going to be an however!)
Toby, like Permaculture, is not Natural Farming. This is not to denigrate PC
or Toby, but to try and draw the comparison between the two due to the often
(perfectly reasonable) misapprehension that the two are interchangeable.

Fukuoka’s NF is an agriculture, PC is a design process. Yet, I do not wish
to suggest that PC is not also involved in agriculture, it is, intimately
so. But if one were to read Permaculture One and Permaculture Two, The
Introduction to Permaculture and Permaculture: The Designers Manual (which
someone has recently done) you will discover that nothing is said about how
to grow your own vegetables.

Let me try and explain the significance of this. Permaculturalists recognize
the importance of growing the maximum amount of food from perennial plants
in permanent places. They also recognize the importance of ‘perennializing’
annuals by allowing self-seeding whenever possible. Yet, for the vast
majority of vegetable and cereal crops eaten, that must be seeded or
transplanted annually, Permaculture has almost nothing to say on how they
should be grown and Permaculturalists are left to choose from one of the
many organic techniques. However, if we are truly committed to permanent
agriculture, then this home and commercial production is every bit as
important as perennial planting.

Fukuoka’s NF is a way of working with the soil to maintain its fertility
without any amendments at all. By simply timing the process of seeding, by
choosing a nitrogen fixing cover crop and by returning all straw back to the
field (in essence by closely observing how the seasons and plants revolved
on the land of his farm) he has achieved a no-input (do-nothing) agriculture
that mimics nature. PC has not adopted this revolutionary approach and is
thus, for all its important sustainable ambitions, not Natural Farming.

PC is still embroiled in what I would characterise as the conventional
western mindset, where the soil is seen as a profit and loss ledger, debit
(crops) must be balanced by credits (soil amendments in whatever form they
take, be they labelled organic or not), rather than the understanding that
soil and plants work together (not excluding the millions/billions of
microorganisms that make up every gram of healthy soil) to maintain a soil’s
fertility. To break this down into ‘hard’ numbers (not something I like
doing but it makes the point): if a plant is made up of 75% water and 20% of
a plants dry matter is of hydrocarbons produced through photosynthesis, then
there is only 5% that must come from the soil. 2.5% of this comes in the
form of Nitrogen fixed on the nodules of nitrogen fixing plants by bacterial
symbionts, leaving only 2.5% to come from the soil in the form of other
elements such as Phosphorus, Potassium, Calcium, Sulphur, Magnesium and Iron
and trace elements such as Silica, Copper, Boron, Zinc, Manganese, Cobalt
and Molybdenum.

Therefore I doubt “…Gaia’s Garden is a good starter book for those getting
into permaculture and natural farming”, well not NF anyway. And from the
philosophical discussions that have passed between Toby and me, I doubt “It
will give you a good philosophical and practical starter’s took kit to work
with”, well not the philosophical part anyway.

Jamie
Souscayrous
”

For fine writing more recently than quoted above by Jamie, see:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/fukuoka_farming/message/5317
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/fukuoka_farming/message/5339
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/fukuoka_farming/message/5353
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/fukuoka_farming/message/5369

Comment by Jase — 9 April 2006 @ 10:14 PM
“history points to the opposite.”

you mean His-tory? the history written by the victors?

Comment by Scott — 9 April 2006 @ 11:50 PM
In the 3 days that “Apocalypse Not�? has been on the web, I’ve gotten over 80 emails about it, and the article has generated over 300 comments on only 3 of the many websites it’s been posted on. Needless to say I’m overwhelmed, but Anthropik is one place that is, to me, well worth spending a little time responding. The article was written last November, long before I’d discovered Anthropik, (those lengthy print publication leadtimes) so this site had no influence on the article. Anthropik has had a significant influence on my thinking since then.

I look at my article now as a draft. I tried to cover far, far too much ground and gave short shrift to too many ideas (that’s why there’s something in it for everyone to love, and to hate). The curse of being a generalist and ecologist is that everything does feel connected to everything else, so staying focused on a narrow topic is a challenge. Jason’s used up 30 theses and many, many thousand words on the same topics I touched on in 2500. So I’ll try to stick to one or two points here, and maybe get to others later.

Of course civilizations collapse, and this one will too. I suspect the agrarian/industrial experiment will turn out to be 10,000-year blind alley and humanity will need to try something else. I’ve never been a cornucopian, and the 30 theses have recently moved me from giving collapse in my lifetime about a 15% chance to more like 30%. For most of my life I was an utter doomer. And that’s the problem. I turn 54 in a few days, and since my early teens I have heard literally hundreds of predictions that the world is going to end. This has been status quo for over 2000 years. The apocalyptic Judeo-Christian view, whether you consciously believe in it or not, is deeply rooted in every westerner. You can’t escape it; we need to believe in the end of the world because only that will allow the transformation from this miserable life into a better one (and clearly Anthropik believes this is a miserable world). There were many in the year 999 who believed just as fervently in the end of the world at the millenium, and with just as compelling reasoning, for that day, as Jason’s. In every year since then each apocalypt had his unshakeable reasons. For the last couple of centuries, since science has rivaled religion as our faith, the reasons have been replete with graphs, tables, and formulae to prove that, no really, this time is different because we never had condition X before, and here’s the math (instead of the visions, or faith, or plague) to prove it. I spent decades believing in collapse, and I’ve simply grown tired of it. I’ve seen too many changes over a lifetime to believe in extending trends to zero or infinity or even into tipping points. I’m not saying collapse can’t or won’t happen. I’m saying a high level of certainty about its near-term occurrence strikes me as insupportable. People react, and that changes things fast.

Predictions are almost always wrong. There are thousands of discarded graphs out there similar to Jason’s complexity curve, tossed out because initial or boundary conditions changed, some variable wasn’t taken into account, or somebody just had a new idea and the whole ballgame shifted. Maybe the complexity curve is right. Maybe not. One big flaw is that increasing complexity does not require increasing “costs�? or energy to manage. Diminishing returns do not apply. Stuart Kauffman (Santa Fe Institute) and colleagues have shown how “order for free�? works and how complexity favors stability. In a later post I can discuss it. See Kauffman’s “The Origins of Order�? or the simple version, “At Home in the Universe.�? Portions are on the web. Uh-oh, I’m veering. Back to the point.

I used Y2k as an example not because it posed no problem. It did, and it was serious, which supports my point. But its real relevance is because even after it was clear that we’d reacted to it and were likely to fix it in time, a large number of people remained wedded to the certainly of collapse. “Everything was different now�? because we’d never been dependent on computers before, so it was a much more formidable class of problem, of unparalleled complexity. Or, in contrast, take the dot.com bust of 2000. It was a new economy, and the boom would never end because it was a whole different class of business and the rules were different now. We always believe we’re headed for a new world; that’s our signature myth. And that belief is 999 out of 1000 times wrong. I’m a biologist, and catastrophism is a rejected system. Change happens either continuously, or not at all for years and then suddenly and briefly–but even then most changes are very small. A few are big, but those are very, very rare. And there’s another topic for later.

Y2k had a terribly short timeline, but we reacted systemically to solve it (no other culture has had that option, but that’s another essay). Peak oil is a more complex problem, but the timeline is much longer, we have begun to respond, and each response extends the timeline (the right side of Hubbert’s Curve) further. Contrary to Jason’s denial, it is not in a new class. We’ve faced critical resource depletion often before and only rarely with collapse—the end of whale oil was feared to be the end of lighting and thus a new Dark Age—and we now face, indeed, primarily technical problems. We need to stop dumping shit in our water. (But Benjamin, there’s a lot of potable water out there; it falls from the sky!) We need to cut oil use. Most of the oil we burn is consumed in stupid, unnecessary ways: we don’t need cars; we don’t need oil to grow food (human waste can replace 80% of our fertilizer, or as Jamie says, plants can, and Jason forgets that buying food is not the only way to get it. Oil prices don’t much effect food you grow yourself with homegrown fertility, as much of the world still does). We don’t need most of what we use oil for. Amory Lovins and others illustrate clearly that we could use 80-90% less energy if we did things differently, but still at no loss of living standard. And I’d like to see “living standard�? for the West descend quite a bit.

Ah, but there’s the population problem. Yes, population is going to have to come way down. Will there be a crash? Most crashes in animal populations are not from starvation; they are from drastically reduced birthrates in response to scarce resources. We’re doing that now. It’s not hard to cut population in half in 2 generations from a dropped birthrate; Europe could more than do it given today’s rate, discounting immigration (see http://www.junkscience.com/news/eberstad.html ). Can the rest of the world? You won’t hear me predicting. But look at how wrong the doomers around population have been to date. Paul Ehrlich, no fool, predicted that in the 1980s overpopulation would cause worldwide famine. Oil bought us out of that one; no one thought you could eat oil (a whole new class of answer!). That’s about to decline, but the input variables are changing in many other ways. In 1990 the UN predicted that world population would peak in 2050 at 12 billion. We’re all gonna starve! In 2000 they saw that birthrates were dropping precipitously in the developed world and revised downward to a 9 billion peak. That’s a staggering revision. Wall Street Journal says the UN is seeing lowered rates in developing countries and will revise the peak down to 8.5 billion. You can bet the actual peak will be below that. Even figuring a 9-billion peak, we could come down to 2.5 billion in 80 years from today with a decline of just over 1.5% per year. A birthrate of 1.4 per woman, Europe’s today, is a much faster decline than that. Stretch the oil out, let scarcity reduce the birthrate, and we’d live in a radically different world without the death of billions. I’m not predicting it will happen just that way; too optimistic for me and as you can see, predictions are usually wrong. But it’s one of many different possibilities. Doomers show a stunning lack of imagination. The world is not that dull; you learn that in time.

There’s lots more to reply to in Jason’s post, but this is long enough. (Is anyone but Jason allowed to use this many words here?) And I can chuckle at the “chicken/ostrich�? title since it doesn’t remotely apply to me. My head is not in the sand. I’ve developed good subsistence skills, spent 15 years largely out of the system and will gladly do it again. It’s why I teach permaculture. I might become a forager, but it’s more permacultural to get animals to do my foraging for me: chickens and rabbits can convert a lot of inedible things into my food and fertilizer while I gather vegetables and watch soil build. I’d recommend keeping your options open. But do we really want to have a collective vision that involves the death of billions? Collective visions have a way of happening. I won’t participate in that one.

to Jase from Oz: Whatever these vague “critical things” are you think I’m missing, I’m very familiar with Natural Farming and revere Fukuoka. So do a lot of people, but Jamie’s about the only one I know who’s doing it. It is terribly alien to what most people know, and, I think, very difficult to practice as fully as Fukuoka does (it’s not just seedballs!). But as Jamie writes, there is nothing in it contrary to permaculture (and I’m the first to admit I’m no philosopher; I wrote a how-to book). But Jamie is wrong that Pc advocates soil amendments. A permaculturist uses plants to build soil first, the way nature does it; amendments only if you fail at that or must act quickly.

And in reply to Vashti about unemployment: I know hundreds of unemployed, and know of thousands more, who are joyful, growing food and learning and not ever wanting to go back to the idiocy of a job. Many unemplyed hunger for the system at first, but plenty find being squeezed out is an opportunity.

Comment by Toby Hemenway — 10 April 2006 @ 3:15 AM
The one thing I dont like about hemmenways article is that it seems to me he is almost saying dont be a scared into abandoning civilization because it will adapt and survive. I dont think that idea should have anything to do with abandoning civilization. See I always thought that regardless of whether or not civilization collapses tomarrow or 100 years from now people saw the abandoment as more than just a necessity of our survival but as a step to enriching and bettering our lives. Its like hemmenways article is an extention of his hopes to cling to civilization. The articled seemed to debate whether or not peak oil would cause collapse but seemed to me to regress into denial of the severity of all the problems we face and “hey 1965 wasnt so bad” just replace 1965 with civilization of the british empire or Rome. Its like hes clinging to civilization and doesnt see or want to believe how bad we have made things for ourselves as can be seen in his conclusion paragraph. I think hes got mastering survival mixed up with destroying all other life so the only thing left to kill us is ourselves and our own devices. I guess the firs 1.5 million years of our existence was luck and the past 10,000 weve mastered survival even though the ability to kill all humans on earth exists in the hands of power crazed war mongers through that mastery. His arguements seemed to be swayed by his denial of certain things. I like Jase’s comment because I totally agree with People who are told: “There’s no one around to treat you if you get injured - there are no doctors on this island,” are bound to take care of themselves. But try telling them: “We’ve got a surgeon and an internist on the island, so you can rest assured that you’ll be well taken care of should anything happen.” Do that, and people will cease to look after themselves. “Leave the fire up to the firemen and the arsonist up to the police.” Most people I talk to have that same attitude towards problems like peak oil , global warming, etc. and I just dont like Hemmenways reaction to these problems as ‘dont be a fear monger’ ’society will adapt’.

Comment by Pat — 10 April 2006 @ 11:54 AM
society is the firemen, and the fire is peak oil, global warming, water shortage,…..

Comment by Pat — 10 April 2006 @ 11:56 AM
“Don’t be a fear mongerer and society will adapt.”

This is the typical response I have seen, mostly in the form of Techno-optimist solutions that will enable everyone to eat plenty, move little, and still scale up their “lifestyles” via “green alternatives”.

This is because people skim heuristically thinking through the problems, if they think about them at all.
Too many people whine about high gas prices, but don’t connect the dots…stemming from Oil.

“Society will Adapt” is not likely a valid conclusions Hemmenway glosses over many facts.
We live in a time that doesn’t entirely function on historical precendent. There has never been 6Billion+ Humans, with such a large portion of them having little to no access to the means to provide their own potable water, or food products.

The complexity of civilization in much of the world, has resulted in a few people having the basic survival skills, food gathering, hunting etc. that was held by a much larger percentage of the population in the past.

Oil is such a massive factor on the entire industrialized world, and indirectly on the 3rd world food supplies…that its overuse and finite-ness presents a major isssue.

Expecting Civilization, which is a large clunky formation of a myriad of interests, geo-political variances to come together to End their economic growth, and to get on the bandwagon of sustainable ideas isn’t remotely likely based on current evidence.

Small groups of humans have always been adaptable, but clearly large groups, nations etc. have historically collapsed, even without the upscaling of complexity that has occurred.

Tribes, groups may be the “firemen” of of peak oil, global warming and water shortage…but expecting the clunky political machinations to help you–is let’s say like selling everything you own to “invest” in powerball tickets.

Comment by bubba — 10 April 2006 @ 12:29 PM
i totally agree thats what i was trying to say about hemmenways article. Its as if he suggests that you dont take any responsibility for yourself and let the clunky political machinations do the work for you. Thats why i didnt like his article.

Comment by Pat — 10 April 2006 @ 1:31 PM
Most people I talk to have that same attitude towards problems like peak oil , global warming, etc. and I just dont like Hemmenways reaction to these problems as ‘dont be a fear monger’ ’society will adapt’.

Interspersed through my article are statements like “Peak oil is as inevitable as death and taxes”, “worldwide depression and soaring unemployment”, “it’s going to be rough” etc. Or is that not gloomy enough for you?

There is a great deal of difference between the doomer fringe making claims that billions are bound to starve, which is fear mongering, and making reasoned arguments about resource depletion and environmental damage. I say nothing about society adapting. I think some individual people will adapt. Some will have a very bad time. I state that society will look very different without growth. Is that a collapse? Collapse requires a “perfect storm” of conditions, and I am unwilling to predict that.

(awaiting moderation of a longer comment)

Comment by Toby Hemenway — 10 April 2006 @ 2:00 PM
In response, you do make mention of “things being rough”, but I guess that’s not gloomy enough for me…

Actually, its just too vague. It’s like our politicians in the US speaking of a “Comprehensive immigration policy, for illegals”.

If you delve into the specifics of the peak Oil scenario’s–food shortages, likely fairly significant one’s are the type of “doom & gloom” that is of primary concern. Unemployment is a function of civilization to a large degree, since water & food, and some minimal shelter remains the only truly needed items for survival.

“Collapse requires a perfect Storm of conditions, I’m not willing to predict that” State Mr. Hemenway (I apologize for mispelling your name in my previous post “)

This is a serious point of contention for many of those who are interested in this sites debate & similar sites.

Ultimately, I am assuming you think that Techno-solutions will at least work to stave off the collapse scenario in the short run (perhaps in our lifetime’s)?

I do agree that Collapse is relative, I think 3rd world status for most countries is pretty much a given…how much beyond that the collapse entails remains in the realm of conjecture at this point, although many have posited theories, backed by rationale & factual limitations of the scaling of society, the industrialized world’s usage/destruction of the earths resources, an economic model built upon endless growth. The psychology world events, and the myriad of complex issues remains hard to put together, although a trend is certainly determinable.

Once inflation, hyperinflation & the loss of ‘belief in paper money, actually meaning something begins to take place en masse, watch out–things could get “rough” as you say quite quick. Modernity is based upon so many luxuries, that most people can barely imagine what type of work/effort is required for primitive life.

So are you buying powerball tickets Mr.Hemenway? I would love to believe in nano-tech perhaps mediating the crisis.

It just seems like your article at some level was just aimed at these type of sites, as Gloom & Doom armageddon type’s who at some level WISH for a major collapse. I can see civilization as generally unhealthy to most people & the environment, but ultimately I like the rosy scenario of the slow collapse & re-invention into a utopian perma-culture/foraging sustainable world–I just believe that that is well beyond Optimism.

Comment by bubba — 10 April 2006 @ 2:24 PM
Just look at it this way Toby your permaculture knowledge will be in high demand the next few years, teaching classes etc.

If you prepare for a collapse, you can still enjoy the benefits of the simplistic lifestyle, move towards being “less attached to the system & it “40hr work week misery, that you mentioned.”

Your right the 99% figure, sounds a bit heavy handed to me…maybe 90% is a better more reasonable figure, calculating in some of your ideas on how humans will quickly adapt, at least some of them, maybe more than the .01%?

Anyway, Carpe the Diem, regardless of what the future holds, you only have today for sure!

Comment by bubba — 10 April 2006 @ 2:47 PM
Hemenway like many of you here are ascribing a type of consciousness to humanity that just doesn’t exist. Human ‘reason’ in the historical sense is always an after-thought (i say this because Hememway seems to think WWII was a result of conscious effort - when anyone with half a mind can see humanity is incapible of AVOIDING war).

Technological progress does not happen unless it serves the means by which we can kill eachother in war. Oil will run out for the middle classes in the world - it will not run out for the upper class and military. Our “Civil Rights” are already being called into question by a government that now admits Humans do not have “rights” - human “rights” are a recent invention created in a time of great leasure brought to you in (great) part by OIL.

I’m not a catastrophist. I just have little faith in the “problem solving” capabilities of humanity as a species. Likely we will liquify coal, create many more nuclear plants in this country, probably not in time to avoid a Depression-style crash but in time to save our species for another hundred years or so

Nevertheless i can asure you that the United States government (and those who voted it into power) will sooner suffocate and irradiate this planet out of existence with green-house gasses and radioactive waste than turn to alternative, renewable, sustainable energy sources because ultimately poisoning eachother to death it is better for business than, say, permaculture.

sadly.

Comment by beelzebobby — 10 April 2006 @ 3:43 PM
whew. i cant wait to eat, drink, and sleep in sulfur!

Comment by Scott — 10 April 2006 @ 5:29 PM
Oh Toby Hemenway!

So, if you revere Fukuoka then please will you call yourself (at least as a brand name) a Fukuoka-style “Nature Farmer”, rather than giving yourself the brand name - what is nothing more than a marketing brand name - “Permaculture” - an extremely pompous plagiarism by those consumate self-promoters Mollison in his outspoken way, and Holmgren in his quieter self-denial of his own self-promoting ways.
In Oz many people such as credible ecological scientists and practitioners with real track-records in sustainable land management such as the select-few sustainable farmers and many Indigenous Ozzy land managers, in other words people who critically examine evidence regarding land management practices, regard “Permaculture” as at its least a bad joke, otherwise as discredited plagiarism or marketing for selling books, courses, farm tours, so called “eco-village” land, etc., and at worst as just another one of those western capitalist big cons.
Basically, Permaculture has an increasingly bad name amongst critically informed naturalist (type) people in Oz, including Indigenous people and hands-on scientists. No doubt as scrutiny is gradually applied to “Permaculture” elsewhere such as in the USA and it is examined in its origins and in its evidence, “Permaculture” will increasing there also come to be dis-reputable.
So it would be better in my experience for you, for your own credibility, for your own self-advancement in your reputation, and hence the implications for the standards you set for yourself as I set for myself to at least aspire to, to describe yourself as a “Nature Farmer” as exemplified by Fukuoka, Masanobu and also by many Native Americans, by many Indigenous Ozzies and by many more peoples, such as some people from India who are currently communicating alot on Fukuoka Farming.
Some of these individual farmers in India presently communicating on the Yahoo Group have been visited by Fukuoka, Masanobu himself and described by him as having the best Fukuoka-standard Nature Farm(s) he has seen anywhere in the world through his travels throughout most of the world, better than Fukuoka’s own farm.

Regards to all,

Jase

NB. Toby i’ve heard Holmgren speak to a public audience, for example in his home place Bega - where he grew up and his mother who attended the meeting still lives - the nearest place he has to his stonghold - He loudly, proudly, and even aggressively advocated the use of bulldozers to change the whole landscape, i’m quite sure Jamie is correct when he says from his past background in “Permaculture” that it does use soil-amendments. What i’m saying is that Holmgren loudly advocates much more extreme soil interference than just soil amendments as fertilizer, so Holmgren and “Permaculture” do use soil amendments aswell. Toby this is one of many examples of why i think what you think is “Permaculture” is not what it is and what in actuality it is is something you and most critical thinking people don’t actually want to be associated with. Hence my calling it a big con. I have much more evidence on this “Permaculture” ‘mislead’. The Fukuoka Farming group has much more evidence on this and very happy success stories being talked about aswell.

Comment by Jase — 10 April 2006 @ 9:42 PM
Methinks this fella Jason has struck a nerve…

Comment by Rick Larson — 10 April 2006 @ 10:17 PM
Hemenway has one great advantage over many of us: when our civilization collapses, his skills will suddenly shoot UP in value, and there will be no shortage of people willing to barter with him.

For many (most?) westerners, the opposite will be true. Sure, people will adapt. We have a lot of “adaptation” to look forward to before The Crash^TM gets us. Soccer moms hooking on streetcorners while hubby deals battery acid to junky killers who pay with stolen food…

Any day now… the year of the Diamond Dogs…

- S.
Karma Incorporated

Comment by Sisyphus — 10 April 2006 @ 10:48 PM
Mr. Hemenway –

Since Jason is out of town at the moment, I thought I might respond to some of what you have said here.

I’d like to start by pointing out where we agree. You make many valid points that I don’t think anyone here is going to disagree with. I’ve seen the assertion made probably hundreds of times that we cannot know the future, that people are constantly predicting the end of the world and are constantly being proven wrong, that society has adapted to problems in the past, that there are many people who it might be polite to label fearmongerers. These are something akin to “universal truths” in this culture, and if one is seen to be contradicting these truths we know they can adequately be dismissed — on grounds that they are insane, quacks, or have ulterior motives.

The trouble comes in when one uses these very valid and important points to make a case against a specific “apocalyptic” claim. As heuristics and stereotypes of the collapsists, the preceding “truths” work very well. We know to be skeptical of those who are even wading into this territory, let alone claiming to have a clear and coherent picture of what the future might be like. BUT — building any kind of “therefore” on the preceding is fallacious.

I would make it very clear that the trends of inaccuracy and fearmongering in the realm of collapse-foreseeing do NOT have any bearing on individual predictions. In the same way that a coin that has landed on heads four times in a row is not any more likely to come up heads again, nor is it any more likely to come up tails, so must we be wary of using historical outcomes of previous predictions to predict how accurate a present prediction is. (It makes sense, I promise.) We must remember that “the coin has no memory.”

How exactly does this apply to humans? Since of course we DO have memory, and we DO have history — for I am certainly not suggesting that we do not — it serves here only to remind us that we must be wary of how we use our history and our memory, for neither are necessarily reliable.

So while history and memory often serve us well, relying on these faculties while, say, gambling dice is apt to be disastrous.

What I am suggesting, here, then, is that each individual prediction of the future must be examined on its own merit, not on the merit of previous predictions.

Here it might be important to stop a moment to note that this is why we have developed heuristics (and our sense of time) in the first place. We live in a world that is unique in every moment. Because we cannot conceivably examine each individual moment to make sure that we are still able to breathe, that our environment still is an environment in which we can live, we develop heuristics and memory in order to navigate the world in a timely fashion. We simply do not have time to stand in front of an oncoming train and contemplate the nature of inertia and existence in that moment. We move.

In the same way, most people in our society have come to expect food at the grocery store, gas at the gas pump, water from the tap, heat from the furnace, light from the light switch, and so on and so forth. Examining these things in modern civilization to see how likely they are to continue to be there is almost as absurd as checking the air every second to make sure you can breathe. At any rate, we seem to subconsciously decide, if there weren’t air we would be dead, so there isn’t much use in worrying about it.

What people here at Anthropik are doing that is so radical is looking at our daily lives and asking “can we assume that we are going to be able to continue to live in this environment?” This is quite a question, for in asking it we begin to question the founding assumptions of our culture, a culture that has adapted to live in this very specific environment. And this, again, is no quick and simple process, as it takes quite a long time to learn to see things that are transparent, let alone ask questions about them.

This process as manifested in Jason has taken years, and well into the millions of words, not merely thousands. The remarkable transition that has occurred over this time period is to no longer assume that there will be food at the grocery store, gas at the gas pump, or water from the tap, but rather to see these as amenities of a civilization that simply cannot last. I can’t speak for Jason here but I do know that for me this has been accompanied by an enormous shift in perspective. Rather than seeing civilization as inevitable, if not necessarily desirable, I see civilization as having happened only very recently in an extremely long process of evolution. Modern civilization is a system that has been exceedingly short-lived even compared to the relatively short life of civilization itself. Despite growing up with cars and the internet I now look at these things as the absurdity they are given the vast majority of history. The electricity, sanitation, and mass transit that we now take for granted have happened only in the last few generations, and are far from being worldwide realities. Just over a century ago the human population was still under 1 billion.

This is why the fields of anthropology, geology (and by extension astronomy), climatology, archaeology, paleontology and ecology are of such fascination to me, because they help me understand the story of this civilization in the context of the larger story of life on this planet. Given this sense of perspective it is difficult to see civilization and our individual lives (for that is what we are truly discussing) as anything but ephemeral. Given this sense of perspective it is impossible to see how the deaths of 6 billion people is anything but a normal event in the cycle of life. I do not speak of an apocalyptic horror, just the mere reality that we’re all going to die. It speaks volumes of our culture that such a statement of reality would be construed as fear mongering — we are so afraid of death that to accept it or embrace it is often seen as insane.

And yet this is exactly what I am seeking to do. I am seeking to rescind the notion that we humans are somehow separate from the cycle of life, and embracing both the pleasant and the unpleasant realities that come with this life. This includes a population collapse, unpleasant as it may be for those who must live during that period. And while I would like to think that there might be a way to undergo a benign population decrease I am of the opinion that the indicators do not point in this direction. I would like to stay away from specific arguments in this discussion, but the sense I get from the arguments I’ve seen presented is that we’re deaf, we’re blind, but we’re on the train tracks and we can feel them vibrating. The train is a comin’, we just don’t know when. While other people might like to stay behind and contemplate the nature of the train, calculating its velocity and speculating about when it might get here — I, for one, have the inclination to move.

So while Jason might not be right about everything and while society might undergo a massive-transformation-in-the-near-future, I’m not hedging my bets on these things. For me, Jason is right ENOUGH that the only sensible thing to do is to prepare. I have not gotten rid of my humanity, I am not claiming that I have an infallible understanding of what the future is going to be like — my assumptions are just in a completely different direction than other people. And I feel like my assumptions are well-grounded in a fairly broad perspective.

I’m not sure how much else is useful to say. Specifics are often tedious and time-consuming and unless one is working within a mutually understood and accepted broader perspective, they tend to be unhelpful. I find it very difficult to communicate across paradigms, preferring in these instances to focus on meta-analyses.

So, I recognize that this response might seem meandering or off-topic, but I feel it is important. I have laid out my line of thinking on these matters before, in the previous debate over urban versus rural sustainability. (I’m not sure if you saw it, as I was directing it toward you and got no explicit response — but here it is again. Though I would like to, I will not reproduce it here, because as you can see it isn’t just Jason that is allowed to use so many words.) You might can see better where I am coming from after reading that.

You close your response to Jason with these words: “But do we really want to have a collective vision that involves the death of billions? Collective visions have a way of happening. I won’t participate in that one.” I would just like to point out that in no way is this a collective vision of society, nor does Jason have any delusions (nightmares?) of it becoming so. If everyone were to have a vision similar to Jason’s, we would be in trouble indeed. As it is I am thankful for the diversity of approaches to collapse, it ensures that as many available niches will be filled as possible. In the end, the tautology of evolution keeps working — anything that survives, survives. (Or, as I prefer it, anything that happens, happens.) Life goes on.

- Devin

Comment by Devin — 11 April 2006 @ 12:35 AM
hey yall its me marty mcfly from back to the future and i just came here to say your all wrong. What the future holds in store is far from what you all seem to think. What actually happened was that peak oil and climate change and facist global government was all a set up by evil shape shifting lizards who used the world leaders as puppets. In 3 weeks toby hemenway and jason godesky decide to settle this arguement with an old fashioned duel after G.W. Bush declares martial law. At draw hemenway blasts godesky one straight between the eyes and snickers under his breath “last chance adaptation hahah” but godesky’s finger triggered by nerve impulses twitches out a shot that hits hemenway directly in the testicles which explode into hundreds of pieces. After too many complications in surgery the doctors are unable to find a technological solution to the problem of where to insert a catheder when all thats left is a tattered penis. He dies of infection. Shortly after the entire planet falls into chaos as the giant lizard king of the trans dimensional shape shifting lizards becomes ruler of the earth. He unleashes millions of small hobbling mushroom men and ghastly winged turtle beasts in his reign of destruction. One man by the name of Ran Prieur discovers that the lizards are allergic to hydrogenated oils but it is hard to find a concentrated source because the FDA (flacid dongs anonymous) regulated that there only be less than .5 grams of trans fat per serving. Through black market smuggling dens Ran and a group of scandinavian scientists obtain a tin of crisco which is used in creating a super hydrogenated cinnimon apple pie. Escorted by 2 italian plumber brothers Ran navigates the sewage pipes to the lizard kings layer. The 2 italians vigorously jump on the mushroom and turtle beasts heads defeating them giving ran enough time to make his offering to the king. Disguised in S&M gear Ran gains entrance to the Kings Royal Molestation room where he uses the lure of tantilizing sex to evoke the lizard king into a ferocious hunger rage thereby consuming the super hydrogenated cinni apple pie. Immediatley the king screams and pain and begans to violently squirt hot bloody diarrhea which continuously soaks ran over and over and it even gets in his mouth. Upon seeing her husband in such peril the lizard queen begans to go into her own hot bloody diarrhea frenzy and all of the shape shifting lizards on the planet follow along because they are patriarchle you know. After nearly drowning in searing hot bloody diarrhea Ran escapes the kings layer and is a national hero. A women asks him to kiss her baby and when he lifts up the baby it vomits all over his face and mouth and he throws the baby at an oncoming taxi and screams “fuck this shit im outta here!” he disappears into the forest never to be seen again. The entire earth is covered in oozing bloody diarrhea which smells worse with each passing day. It takes 25 years to clean up and 25 years after that everyone forgot about the whole thing. Its paradise there now and people are free to do what they like anytime such as molesting animals or chucking babies at things or picking on children and they lived this way for many thousands of years. The End.

Comment by McFly — 11 April 2006 @ 12:53 AM
Jase from Oz:

This isn’t the right forum to debate the merits of permaculture versus natural farming. Not only is it clear that your mind is slammed utterly shut, but a debate would be grounded in error. Jamie, at least, understands that natural farming and permaculture are not in the same logical category; if you can’t grasp that, you’re an even worse philosopher than I am. So lay off the “Hemenway is no philosopher�? quotes until you learn the basics yourself.

You castigate Holmgren for bulldozer use. The is nothing in Pc that forbids it. But natural farming would completely forbid something much more brutal to the earth: your computer. How can you use one? To claim that NF is on a “higher philosophical plane�? (the argument of tyrants and murderers) and then use machinery (ever use a car? Electricity? Metal tools?) is the height of hypocrisy. I can’t imagine any benefit in my engaging in further discussion.

Comment by Toby Hemenway — 11 April 2006 @ 11:22 AM
Is planting tons of berrie bushes, fruit bearing trees, and doing bio-intensive double dug gardening, using veggie fragment composting, considered natural farming, permaculture, horticulture or a mix?

Since thats what i’m doing, and continuing to try and improve upon. But I’m a newb when it comes to gardening, basically in the “read in book” trial & error in reality stage currently.

?

Comment by Bubba — 11 April 2006 @ 11:31 AM
Devin (and please, call me Toby): The reason I visit this site is the superiority of its reasoning compared to any other collapse-related (I won’t call it “doomer�?) site. Both your recent post, and the one you point to in “urb v rural�? are very close approximations to what my thinking has been since I was in my teens, and I’m grateful to you and Jason et al for articulating it far better than I ever could (sorry I didn’t respond to your urb post; life gets busy). I realize this sounds like I’m talking out of both sides of my mouth, but humans are complex. Ram Dass says (paraphrasing), “some days when someone asks, ‘Are you hopeful?�? I answer, ‘Yes, I’m hopeful.’ Other days I answer, ‘No, I am not hopeful.’�? Or as Whitman put it, “Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself. I am large. I contain multitudes.�? I’m not as large as Whitman, but I can contradict myself with little hesitation.

My statistics knowledge is pretty good, so I know that the tossed coin doesn’t know its history. But a better analogy might be the guy who thinks, “Jets are complex and sometimes fail,�? so he goes to O’Hare and points to a plane, saying, “That one’s gonna crash. It didn’t? Okay, that one. No, that one.�? If he stays there for a few years pointing at every plane, he’ll eventually be right, but he’s one hell of a tiresome guy in the meantime. Being who I am I encounter a lot of doomers, and they are the most monomaniacal and boring people I have ever met, even if sometime in the next 300 years they wind up being right. My irritation was part of what prompted “Apocalypse, Not,�? hence its departure from rigorous logic (and even coherence) at times. But I do make a distinction between the “it’s the end of the world, so head for the hills�? crowd and you folks at Anthropik, even if the message boils down to the same sound bite.

I’ve fought being a part of western culture most of my life. I was bred to be part of the elite (fancy prep school and college, old family, etc.) and have bounced in and out of it several times. Countless times I’ve said, “I loathe the culture I’m a part of and don’t want to contribute to it.�? My discovery of permaculture in the late 1980s gave me the tools to largely cease contributing to it. The huge piece that Anthropik has offered me is that the problem is not just this culture, it’s civilization. That’s been, in an odd way, a great comfort to me. I wish, though, I could subscribe more fully to the idea of civilization’s end. Anthropik incorporates a lot of anthropology in its studies, and there are, indeed, a lot of cultures that have collapsed. I come from a biology/ecology background, though, with many years study of complex systems, and what impresses me is the tremendous resilience of complex systems. Beyond a certain level of complexity, a system requires an astonishing amount of effort, or a very special set of circumstances, to kill or even bounce it out of its current state. A near-global civilization is vastly more complex than Easter Island or Rome, and I suspect that not only is it going to be very hard to “collapse�? this culture, let alone civilization as a whole, but the inevitable downward descent, or the attempt to avoid it, is going to be the most spectacularly bizarre and unpredictable event in the species’ history. Staggering quantities of energy and resources are going to be fountaining in all directions in search of a new homeostatic state. Staying out of the way will be very hard.

Complex systems fail in highly complex and chaotic ways. So I’m sure that some of my reluctance to embrace the collapse hypothesis is that I know there is no safe place to be during it. My ten rural years shows me that that ain’t the answer. My experience with many intentional communities (and the recent unfortunate schism at Anthropik) shows how very, very difficult it is to form new communities, and, now that I’m back in the city, I sure don’t want to hear anything about how bad cities will get. So where does one go? It’s tempting to huddle with my more elite relatives, as I’m sure some will do just fine, but I couldn’t live with myself. I would rather eat them.

People say I’m in good shape knowing permaculture. My own doomerism was one impetus for me to begin doing it; you are right that the only sensible thing to do is prepare, and it seems the best toolkit. The train is coming and some will surely get splattered. My remark about getting chickens and rabbits to forage for you is one you might listen to; they are naturally better foragers than you will ever be. (Your grandchildren might be good foragers, but you and I won’t be. Small foraging animals can help with the transition and wilder breeds like bantams need little help to survive. Plus they scatter when strangers appear.) But I also agree with you and Jason that this civilization isn’t going to survive by doing permaculture. Not only can we not support 6-9 billion on it, most westerners can’t even begin to grasp the basics of it; it’s too alien to the mindset.

I’m working on a (lengthy, as always) piece on complexity and collapse and will post it soon. Meanwhile, I am grateful for what you and your colleagues are doing, and offer my best hopes to the Anthropik Tribe. Excellent work, good thinking, and thanks for the thoughtful words. I have some real work to do today but will try to address other intelligent points you make when time permits. We are, though, largely on the same track. Today I’ve woken up on the hopeless side of the bed, vis a vis civilization. Tomorrow may be different.

Comment by Toby Hemenway — 11 April 2006 @ 1:36 PM
As long as we are all getting philosophical on each other, I do want to point out that words are inherently babble. Hopefully, some of us will come away from this discussion with an ever more refined personal language.

Personally, I’m hearing the same thing from both Toby and his detractors on this issue. I too am bored of “sky falling” predictions. There is a fundamental cultural issue here, whether you call it permanent culture or thesis number take your pick. It does not matter if peak oil happens today or decades from now. If the culture remains the same, that we are separate from nature and own it, then we are equally doomed no matter how much oil exists.

It is my observation that both permaculture advocates and peak oil advocates hear only their own babble, or language. Whether we replace iron with bucky balls or forests with sand, both camps want the same thing, which is to be a part of nature again.

Comment by -Sean. — 11 April 2006 @ 1:41 PM
Toby –

I’m particularly fond of the Whitman quote, and also Emerson’s “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,” so I hear you. I also understand where you’re coming from in your frustration with the incoherence and “monomaniacism” of many of the doomers. I too get frustrated with those who are unable to look beyond the simplistic “we’re all going to die” and begin changing in their own lives.

I’ve looked at this problem (collapse and how people are going to respond to it) from many angles now, and the most powerful insights for me have come in the realm of ecology and psychology/anthropology. From psychology/anthropology I have begun to learn what it means to be human. And from ecology I have begun to learn the nature of how we interact with all life on earth.

One of the most powerful insights I’ve had, in the psychology realm of things, was that all of this tumult stemmed from the fear of death. I have spent a good deal of time analyzing our culture’s fear of death — WHY “we’re all going to die” is such a horrible thing to acknowledge. There is something about death — perhaps that we intuitively understand that it is the final end to our life, although some will desperately deny that our life ends with death — that exposes all of our insecurities and fears about life. Every unresolved issue we have in our lives, when we die we will not be able to resolve. Every thing we get pleasure from, all of our extant hopes and dreams will be completely gone when we die. It’s the end of our conscious self, and it’s therefore terrifying because what drives our consciousness (ego) and our lives is the search for fulfillment, and death brings with it a final unfulfillment of all of our postponed and imaginary lives.

As a result we have constructed an elaborate story that we enact in order to make ourselves feel separate from the web of life. We are sheltered and domesticated, and have so desperately attempted to put the cycle of life and death out of our minds and daily half-lives that we no longer ARE alive. And in our insecurity about living and dying, this is exactly the illusion we would like to maintain — that since we are no longer alive, no longer “merely” animals, we no longer have to die. We achieve an absurd equilibrium wherein we continually undermine life and make it unfulfilling in order to make it last as long as possible so that we will not die unfulfilled. All of this to maintain the illusion that we are somehow immortal, that we are “gods”, in a desperate attempt to make our own lives feel meaningful where they are really not.

In this culture it seems we spend our entire lives distracting ourselves, escaping from this realization. In the meantime, our true selves rebel and there is a subconscious desire for the whole game to end, for it all to go away. Thus we tend to distract ourselves in the most unhealthy and dangerous of ways, the things giving us thrills often being those which bring us closer to death. And those who are unable to maintain the illusion of a fulfilling life, and yet are not empowered enough to be able to escape, fixate on their situation. These are the ones who tend to become “monomaniacal” in their death wish..

I think I have already discovered the origins of this fear of death and this insecurity in ourselves in a post called Healing the Mind/Body Split. I suggested that when growing up in this culture we experience trauma that at the time we do not have the ability to escape from. I looked at the nature of trauma, and had the insight that trauma had the effect of crippling the system of our mind-body and making it linear, mind OVER body. This splitting gives us a deep sense of insecurity over who we really are. One important observation I made was that when we discuss civilization, we’re actually discussing our own personal lives:

… This is getting into the realm of the trauma that we have personally gone through. We use our thoughts and our intellect to stay away from or repress our feelings because they are so painful. This is the very essence of the mind/body split — when trauma occurs during our childhood, we’re trapped and the only release we have is through dissociation. As an example, a trauma could be being punished by a controlling or manipulative parent, often the father, for doing something that was a part of our identity.

From this dissociation or disconnection we have the linear paradigm, where the mind, the subject, acts in a top-down way on a world of objects. Denied the balancing feedback of the world connected to the mind, the world is seen as something we own or control — or at the very least, something we act on in a single direction or line.

As we learn to repress our feelings and emotions more and more (we call such a process ‘maturity’), we gradually learn to think of our entire story as one of linear progress. We rise up from the depravity of childhood and become adults, coming to understand what was a traumatic experience as being for our own good.

We then project this story onto our society as a whole. While we originally conceived of civilization as a traumatic experience or a Fall from Grace (Eden), wherein we were punished by God (the Father) for our innate curiosity, we gradually learned to think of the entire story as one of progress. We rise up from the depravity of savagery and become civilized, coming to understand what was a traumatic experience as being for our own good.

Inevitably, then, questioning the story of civilization questions our own stories on a subconscious level. Rather than talking about our emotions and our feelings, however, we play out this discussion symbolically and intellectually, preferring to discuss such abstract concepts as “primitive” versus “civilized” rather than the closer-to-home child versus adult or body versus mind.

Analyzing doomerism and cornucopianism in this context leads to some interesting conclusions. It would seem that those who are wishing for the end times have something of a death wish, to be put out of their misery. Those who foresee the collapse as a catalyst for personal change are speaking of the death of their false self and a transition to a more authentic self — the “collapse” of a facade. I suggest that the “cornucopians” are threatened by these “doomers” because the doomers are suggesting a fact that the cornucopians have built their entire identity around denying — that their life might not be so great after all, that there might be another, better alternative.

At this point I tend to conclude that we’re all missing the point when we discuss civilization and collapse. The words we are using mask the real things we’re talking about: our own, deeply personal stories. Not being mindful of this leads inevitably to the kind of unfortunate blow-up occurring recently here.

As for me, when I talk about walking away from civilization, I’m talking about my own story of dropping out of school and walking away from the false self I had created in order to please my parents. I’m talking about reconnecting with who I really am, as cheesy as that may sound. (Alan Watts writes a book on this sense of cheesiness, The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are.) When I discuss civilization in earnest with my friends I often find myself trying to influence them to walk away too, when I really am only looking for validation of my story. At any rate I wholeheartedly relate to this sentiment: “I loathe the culture I’m a part of and don’t want to contribute to it.” However, I’m not sure I would go so far as eating my relatives. I would much prefer to eat chickens and rabbits… learning how to hunt and trap rabbits is one of the first things on my itinerary should I move to Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage, I hear they have lots of rabbits there.

I look forward to your piece on complexity and collapse. I would say that complexity as defined on this site (as defined archaeologically by Joseph Tainter; complexity is simply the number of items used by that culture) differs widely from the use of the same term in ecology. A previous discussion on the definition of complexity on this site took place starting here. Here’s my contribution:

The critique of complexity in civilization stems from the fact that as it grows and maximizes efficiency — in other words, reducing redundancy — it becomes increasingly fragile. Also, as civilization grows, more resources must be allocated to its systems to support it, resulting in a positive feedback loop that will result in those systems’ failure. Civilization is an unsuccessful adaptation because it seeks to continually grow and maximize efficiency at the same time, making it prone to collapse.

As you’re aware, complexity in ecosystems does not preclude redundancy. In human designed systems, especially systems that are designed to maximize growth instead of stability, redundancy is excess. Ecology works as a system of limiting (in systems thinking terms, “negative”) and reinforcing (”positive”) feedback loops, maintaining balance. Civilization works as a system of only reinforcing feedback loops, ensuring that it becomes imbalanced with respect to its environment.

Also, it might be helpful to point out that civilization does this at the expense of its environment. No species I know of can actively destroy its habitat and expect to survive. Thus even if complexity-in-human-society were not subject to diminishing returns, it’s still unsustainable, because it’s destroying the very resource base it depends on. Jeff Vail seems to have put together the most likely vision of a complex-as-in-ecology society, but it entails the networked interaction of local self-sufficient nodes and an emergent larger structure — bottom-up and decentralized, not top-down and hierarchical. This rhizome network still implies a “collapse” of the civilization (as defined anthropologically; including hierarchy and centralization) structure.

Anyway, those are just my two cents on complexity. There have been whole long discussions about the definition of the word collapse too — we talk about it like we’re all talking about the same thing, but I highly doubt we are. This is probably something it wouldn’t hurt to consider more often.

This has gotten a bit long, now, so I think I’ll end it here. I’ve enjoyed this discussion, I look forward to continuing it.

- Devin

Comment by Devin — 11 April 2006 @ 8:00 PM
A list of grossly ignorant assumptions about me, my words and/or views and even about Fukuoka-sensei’s views by Toby Hemenway in
”
April 11th, 2006 at 11:22 am
Jase from Oz:

1) This isn’t the right forum to debate the merits of permaculture versus natural farming.

2) Not only is it clear that your mind is slammed utterly shut, but a debate would be grounded in error.

3) Jamie, at least, understands that natural farming and permaculture are not in the same logical category; if you can’t grasp that, you’re an even worse philosopher than I am.

4) So lay off the “Hemenway is no philosopher�? quotes until you learn the basics yourself.

5) You castigate Holmgren for bulldozer use. The is nothing in Pc that forbids it.

6) But natural farming would completely forbid something much more brutal to the earth:

- 7) your computer. How can you use one?

To claim that NF is on a “higher philosophical plane�? (the argument of tyrants and murderers)

9) and then use machinery (ever use a car? Electricity? Metal tools?) is the height of hypocrisy.
”

Where was your reverence for �?岡正信 Fukuoka, Masanobu, his ways, and what would be the corollary of that - reverence for his colleagues, workers and fellow practitioners such as Michiyo Shibuya who has visited Fukuoka’s farm herself every 2 months over the last two years, obviously with Fukuoka’s invitation, as the farm generally is closed to the public -the last i heard; Who contributes her best to nature farming practice; Who does use someone’s computer, perhaps like me someone elses not owning a useable computer, only a secondhand leftover nowadays junk computer, doesn’t have or drive a car, has only limited solar power, and has the faculty and setup to live practically independently from the outside world and very nearly actually sustainably; and who are of course still humbly learning from �?岡正信, from Indigenous peoples and from some few ‘western’ actually fully sustainable living people - see:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/fukuoka_farming/message/5465
”
From: “michiyoshibuya”
Date: Thu Feb 2, 2006 11:28 pm
Subject: birthday and fund raising
Hello,
This is Michiyo from Japan; I am back after two years of absence from here.

Today is Masanobu Fukuoka’s 93rd birthday. Some friends are celebrating in Tokyo with his video message.

Over these two years, I visited the fukuoka farm in Ehime every two months(please don’t shower me with questions; and I cannot deliver any personal messages to him since now he is now completely retired
from all affairs), I took part in some domestic re-greening projects, and finally I was able to visit
Panos in Greece.
I met quite a few list members in various places, I hope they are still here contributing to the lively discussion or at their farm covered with straws.

I am now preparing for a seeding project in the bare mountain area where there used to be a copper mine. Although the project is self-supported, I would like to raise funds by selling the books and video tapes if possible.

I am wondering if any of the list members would contribute and support us:
I am selling 5 “The Ultimatum of God Nature, the One-Straw Revolution A RECAPITULATION” by Masanobu Fukuoka
(3 of them are rat-bitten around the edge, and the other two have some damages, too from having been stored at his mountain hut!)
I want to sell one copy at USD30 or EUR25, including the shipping.

These copies are among the last 10 copies that were printed in 1996.

We used to sell one copy for JPY3,000 plus the shipping. So with the damages, I would have liked to offer at a much lower rate, but please understand this is a fund raising.

I am also selling
“For Living on the Planet Earth: Natural Farming, Masanobu Fukuoka” by Koji Imaizumi; 61 minutes, 1998.

It is a video in the NTSC format. It is a documentary film of Masanobu’s trip to India in 1997, and Yuko Honma’s instruction on how to make hand-made clayballs.
I will sell a copy for USD 35 or EUR 30 including the shipping.

I still have not figured out how to receive money, possibly International (Postal) Money Order? or you can propose me the preferred method of paying.

If anyone wants those items, first they need to contact me by sending a personal e-mail to see
if I have the stock, and after my reply, they should send me money, and then I will send the book.(sorry for such trouble)

As for the content of the book or the video, maybe those who have them already can give others honest opinions and advices. (I will not be offended by negative remarks.)

I enjoy reading news from all over the world. Thank you for all the posting.

Michiyo Shibuya(Ms.)
”

I shouldn’t have to say to you that you - Toby Hemenway - are only speaking for & can only speak for yourself.

No amount of bullying assumptions about me; defensive, ignorant & empty accusations of hypocrisy; defensiveness of what are in evidence your vested material interests, or restatement of the pompous “Permaculture” name, etc. can ever change the words David Holmgren for example has said personally in the prescence of his students, his mother, myself and many of the public, loudly advocating unsustainable practices under his own brand name shared with Bill Mollison: “Permaculture”.

Toby, I am not speaking from a mind slammed shut such as when saying “Permaculture” as originated, defined & described by Holmgren and Mollison is a con. I am speaking from an open mind in that I always hope and would love to learn that Holmgren, Mollison, yourself and more people will become actually sustainable, in your case are you maybe already?, but Holmgren & Mollison by their own descriptions of their practices, by their own evidence however they fudge it & by what they advocate are not at all. I’m talking about evidence not arbitrary slammed shut mind or opened mind - having a skeptical scientific or scholarly mind I am always open minded to my own error aswell as everyone else’s. Further that they as originators of the brand “Permaculture” will realise it is pompous and irrationally so, to claim a permanent culture or permanent agriculture, even if it was just their language that is poorly thought out, when they apparently meant a very different meaning & word: perennial agriculture. Maybe they know this exaggeration of the possibilities of their “Permaculture” and designed the name as marketing or spin to appeal to the western ego-trippers - the very people who most need to learn to be more humble and about more living beings than themselves. Then if they realise this or before they realise this change I hope that seemingly well intentioned people such as yourself who have joined their brand-wagon will realise that it is not in your best interests to be associated with such a pompous claim as in the brand name “Permaculture”.

With a desire to edify you i say, adding further supporting information of a brighter note, again: I propose to you that you call yourself a Nature Farmer or a Fukuoka Farmer, rather than associating with that mere brand name “Permaculture”. In philosophy “Permaculture” is anathema to Fukuoka Nature Farming. While on many occaisions the physical practice may look the same to the untrained eye and short-term observer, even though Permaculture is ultimately unsustainable by definition, precisely because it claims for itself and pretends to permanence, when Fukuoka, Masanobu is aware of the constant flux of life - that all is impermanence. Since the 1930’s he, Fukuoka-sensei has written three critical books on 無 Mu - buddhist spiritual nothingness or emptiness from which all things arise spontaneously in flux and go to nothing again - as similar in the ‘Western’ science of the big bang coming from nothing or from singularity.

Evidently many well intentioned people who have jumped on Mollison’s and Holmgren’s brand-wagon have not critical examined the philosophical and ethical poverty of “Permaculture”. First, Permaculture is a bad name for anyone associated with it (and for many in Australia - Permaculture & Mollison & Holmgren’s origin). Any sustainable approach must be reconciled to its own impermanence, sustainable (multiple) cultures are very far from a supposed permanent single culture. Any sustainability must be reconciled to its changing from old cultures to different newer ones. This recognition of all existence being a flux 無 Mu, is a philosophy that “Permaculture” is at odds with. Wishful-thinking about occupying the space of a permanent culture is the pinnacle of pretensious pomposity by Mollison & Holmgren, even if they merely devised this as marketing, it is not suprising that this has come from members Australian colonialist families, who are well known to have generated many colonialist self-aggrandising illusions, such as in some families that they discovered or were the first explorers in a place. In fact indigenous people have been there in any Oz place for at least 45,000 years, and most likely Chinese people re-discovered many coastal places in Oz at least 500 years before these colonialist Europeans such as my and Holmgren ancestors.
I don’t ever sell my writing - even my better writing & scholarship that i have done elsewhere is always provided freely at a substantial cost to me, because i have the conviction that actual sustainability is more important than my individual gain, eg. my offspring’s welfare, it is an incumbancy of actual non-hypocrits who meanwhile do continue to operate DOING THEIR BEST within the context of an unsustainable establishment western system, …

Jase

Comment by Jase — 11 April 2006 @ 10:09 PM
Sustainability can only be codified, in plain english terms, sustainability can only be descriptively defined in philosophical terms. A design system cannot ever produce sustainable lifestyles, societies, civilisations or sustainable human ecosystem for our whole planet, because our planet is extremely diverse in space and time. It is changing immensely over time with past Ice Ages bringing the sea level to 140 metres - ca. 300 ft lower than today only ca. 20,000 years ago, then exposing vast land areas presently submerged to terrestrial life including humans who then obviously sustained themselves to reproduce until us people today. It is changing immensely as one travels in space across the planet as well as through time, having recently formed soil out of volcanic rocks and from glacially weathered rocks, which are amongst the most fertile soils known together with alluvial soils derived from them, through to soils which have formed from rocks which have never been wholely renewed since many millions, even tens of millions of years ago - many of the common soils in Australia are prime examples of soils from these extremely old & weathered rocks or other substrates.

No single sustainable system can in material or material design terms be applicable or ever successful over such extreme variation as occurs throughout the whole planetary space or over such immense changes in climate and bio-geo-chemistry such as salinity, over time. A philosophy or a meta-philosophy which I understand Fukuoka, Masanobu’s as being can codify or descriptively define multiple types of sustainable possible lifestyles, societies, civilisations or human ecosystems, in sweeping generalisation terms, for the whole planet. And this over the unimaginably vast stretches of variety in space across the planet and in the unimagineable vast changes over time of the planet and its solar system and universe -context.

Jase

Comment by Jase — 12 April 2006 @ 5:12 AM
* Whoops that should have been “ca. 400 ft” - if you’re thinking while reading then you know where i mean.

* And this sentence again - reworded clearly:
“A philosophy or a meta-philosophy which I understand Fukuoka, Masanobu’s as being can codify or descriptively define multiple types of sustainable possible lifestyles, societies, civilisations or in sweeping generalisation terms, human ecosystems for the whole planet.”

Sorry folks,
i think i’ve had to write too much today elsewhere aswell as here, i’m tired and it’s getting late.

Cheers,

Jase

Comment by Jase — 12 April 2006 @ 5:45 AM
Hey –

Just this morning, Bill Maxwell posted a link over at Ishcon to an NPR inteview with Michael Pollen, author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma. (link

Shortly after listening to the program, I arrived here and read Toby’s comment:

I come from a biology/ecology background, though, with many years study of complex systems, and what impresses me is the tremendous resilience of complex systems.

Devin has already responded to this rather neatly, however, in the interview, there was a quote from Wendall Barry that I think you will appreciate, Toby. The discussion concerned the absence of animals on today’s modern, ‘industrial’ farms: we have “…taken a solution and neatly divided it into two problems” The solution, o course, was the wonderful closed loop symmetry of ‘traditional’ farming and the problems? Infertilitiy of farms and pollution from feed lot industrial meat production.

I think this quote admirally expresses the difference between ‘engineered complexity’ and ‘organic complexity’ which, ofttimes, are diametrically opposed.

Jase…

What are you trying to accomplish with these long diatribes against permaculture (and Toby, personally)?

Natural Farming is a useful tool for us to explore as we try and envision and create new, hopefully sustainable, human systems. Permaculture, likewise, is a useful tool for the same goal. The two are not interchangeable, nor are they mutaully exclusive, unless the ‘tool-user’ decides to treat them as such…

Janene

Comment by Janene — 12 April 2006 @ 9:21 AM
I agree with Janene’s above post, knowledge of horticulture/permaculture etc. is very useful knowledge…even if you aspire to have the mobility of the hunter/gatherer>>staying 1-2 seasons or more in an area is LIKELY to VERY LIKELY.

I truly doubt that most tribes will constantly roam the earth, especially transitional type’s who were not born into it, and still carry cultural conditioning with them, whether the like it or not.

You may rebel against the picket fence, owning of one area mentality, but (staying in one area “Home”)has some strong roots in many people’s psyche’s.

Comment by Bubba — 12 April 2006 @ 9:59 AM
I listened to the NPR piece, too. Again, important points are that industrial agriculture is even worse than mere totalitarian agriculture, but that becomes moot with the coming oil crisis. I’m here at anthropik.com for the new culture element, not the peak oil buzz. I get enough peak oil buzz from the media and NYC activists.

In the same way childish reactions from this page’s comments loose my own attention, I can’t imagine a pro totalitarian agriculturalist would have the attention span to properly grok the concepts of this site. Not only are we all literally on the same page together, but we also want the rest of humanity to sympathize that the violence against Mother Earth should stop. In a way, we want the totalitarian agriculturalist to be on this page with us, but there is too much Mother Culture in the way for them to comprehend.

The rhizome/tribal approach is a wonderful strategy for those of us already here on this page. However, concepts are needed to bridge the gap, or we ought to expect 2006’s mainstream culture to see us as alarmists and neo-hippy fascists (a contradiction that they wouldn’t know anything about, but that didn’t stop them from voting for duh). I see Permaculture as a stepping stone, or bridge, not the embodiment of a future quasi-permanent culture. Some of it’s practitioners operate as totalitarian agriculturalists, while others have attained the wisdom of Masanobu Fukuoka for real. For many, Permaculture was the bridge that brought them to the one straw revelation.

Some of us are creating bridges in the mainstream to a new culture. Please don’t be alarmed by some of the things you see, but know we come to this site because we know where we want to bring humanity (trust is a very difficult step on this one). I know of several networks of tribes in the formation stages, whether in NYC or Minnesota. Telling people to eat rats, snails, pigeons, cockroaches, or urine soaked chickweed won’t bring them over our bridges. Permaculture is hard enough to sell the mainstream, as it is, without rejecting it out of hand as not permanent (I read it to be a transition from cheap energy to low energy, or a bridge across the peak oil divide). Of course, many practitioners don’t get it and it costs money to be a practitioner. How else can it appear in the mainstream as a legitimate concept? Free classes are a notable failure, as takers often value information less when it wasn’t painful to attain.

I can take Permaculture to the South Bronx and make a difference, but I can’t take Natural Farming techniques. If they won’t listen to even Permaculture, it’s cheaper to buy homes in the most poverty stricken areas (lowest point of funding inertia), and also start “businesses”, for them to start having time to listen. Ending wage slavery will motivate them to spread the word. The free people will need partners ready to supply food and resources, which they can reciprocate as a base in NYC to spread the word, raise funds, and establish counter economies to fuel more land/home purchases that rescue ever more people/land.

The only question is how much time we have to establish an anti-economy. Do note the Henry George influences on how economics really work, so that it can be countered by rhizomes breaking free from this system of “wage”, or actually “rent” slavery.

-Sean.

Comment by -Sean. — 12 April 2006 @ 11:27 AM
I think this quote admirally expresses the difference between ‘engineered complexity’ and ‘organic complexity’ which, ofttimes, are diametrically opposed.

I agree. I’ve often made the argument to my vegan friends that you cannot hope to do sustainable agriculture (let’s let the oxymoron slide, okay?) without animals. Engineered systems are nearly always crippled ones. But most of this society’s major systems aren’t engineered. No one engineered how NYC gets its food, or how the US economy is contructed; they just grew like topsy, in an organic, coevolutionary way. Those are massively complex systems that share many qualities with ecosystems. There’s been a lot written on the features that economies and societies share with ecosystems. Kevin Kelly’s Out of Control (the book can be read on the web) is an enjoyable place to start. Those shared features are some of the reasons I think that the decline/collapse/what have you will be a very bizarre and unpredictable event, not at all like a machine decelerating to a stop when it’s out of fuel, and more like, say, living with a schizophrenic, bipolar aunt.

Comment by Toby Hemenway — 12 April 2006 @ 11:43 AM
No one engineered how NYC gets its food, or how the US economy is contructed; they just grew like topsy, in an organic, coevolutionary way.

However, they are dependent upon heavily engineered systems. There won’t be a breakdown in how the food gets to NYC. There will be a breakdown in growing the food that NYC would eat.

That being said, you are probably right that it won’t be at all predictable. We cannot easily predict which parts will go first. Hence, we won’t know how it will go from there.

Comment by William Carrington — 12 April 2006 @ 12:44 PM
Hey –

hmmm… looks like an honest difference of opinion. Interesting..

I think William almost hit on it (sorry William ), the breakdown will not occur in the organic relationships between growers, vendors, retailers consumers etc. The breakdown will occur specifically in the engineered systems: ie, farming, transportation and distribution networks. Individual grocers will be knocked by the wayside by upheavals in the economic system as a whole (which may be redundant enough to be considered organic, but which is also highly susceptible to investor perception/pull out), leading to individual consumers in NY having no connection to food that is still being produced and distributed. OR, individual OTR truckers will be driven off the road by the economics of peak oil, to the degree that food is left rotting in the fields for lack of transportation. OR, farmland becomes a new dust bowl, without oil to enrichen the soil, leaving nothing to transport to NY retailers…

Of course, in all likelyhood, we will see some of these forces acting on all levels interactively, so no one industry niche gets hit too much harder than any other, but as each niche takes its lumps, thier problems reverberate off the others in the system creating secondary and tertiary issues (which then lead to new primary ones).

Obviously, this is just me babbling examples of what Jason and Devin (and others) mean when they talk about a catabolic collapse… snowball effect… positive feedback loops.

Janene

Comment by Janene — 12 April 2006 @ 1:34 PM
Devin,

In skipping over Jase’s posts (I’m not going to bother) I skipped yours; sorry. Wonderful, wonderful stuff and I’m in full agreement. I’ve got a major talk to give today, but afterward I’d like to bring in the work of Stan Grof (not the best ref, but his books are outstanding) and the death/rebirth process that I think our culture is trying to go through right now. More later.

Comment by Toby Hemenway — 12 April 2006 @ 2:00 PM
How fast could collapse happen? The faster, and sooner, the collapse occurs will determine survival strategy. If it were to happen tomorrow, I can head to Maine where my relatives live, or even Nova Scotia. If it happens slowly, it doesn’t make sense for my family to suffer the premature upheaval.

For the number of people who get these concepts in NYC, there is plenty of forageable food, or at least Green Markets and CSAs to meet all food needs, no matter where you live in the city. As for foraging, some parts of the city are better than others. I know of specific cases where people live exclusively off foraging in the northern most part of Manhattan. From the GW bridge all the way up to Inwood Hill Park, there is food available year round.

If you want to stay in NYC, Inwood will be the best place to crash (whether staying in the woods, or at the nearly abandoned convents for 1/10 the cost of a cheap hotel). Here you will see the beginning of a shift away from grocery stores. A few parents were horrified at my suggestion their children learn foraging skills (they are quick to tell me it is illegal), but we are working hard to get through their mythology. The real fun begins in June with the CSA (thu evening in Isham) and Farmer Market (sat morning/afternoon) dueling it out with the tasteless selection at the neighborhood grocery stores.

If we act as if we are seeing the end before our eyes, then little will be accomplished. Assuming we have time, but not much, seems the most productive. We can work on these early stages of local economies as a stepping stone into the new culture. If we keep telling ourselves that we won’t make it, then the track record of thinking in a negative way is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Moving forward optimistically may fail, but at least we will have tried our best by not blocking our own path.

Doom and gloom is a short term attention gimick that looses credibility over time. Finding an alternative model, that is simple and works, will slowly build credibility at the cost of moving a little slowly and obscurely at first. It is frustrating to wait for a long term plan to take hold, but it works in the end, rather than just temporarily.

Comment by -Sean. — 12 April 2006 @ 2:18 PM
The concept of a system-wide “Collapse” assumes a society that has singular center of commerce; basically one where all roads lead to Rome.
We don’t live in that kind of world anymore. Some roads lead to New York City yes, and some to Los Angeles or Chicago. But the demise of one center does not bring the whole house of cards down in a single swoop. I suspect that we will see a slow decline in standard of living in spotty locations as more and more people slip under the poverty line. There is not going to be a moment of instant realization that “Collapse” is under way and that the Sky is Falling. Chicken Little will be able to co-exist for a long time with Mr. Ostrich Head and both will find validation for their point of view. One just has to look in the direction one seeks. Chicken Little will forever have his head tilted toward the falling sky and Ostrich will forever have his head buried in denial. Both truths will be true at the same time and neither will be the whole story.

Comment by step back — 12 April 2006 @ 5:00 PM
Hey

The concept of a system-wide “Collapse” assumes a society that has singular center of commerce; basically one where all roads lead to Rome.

I have to disagree with that. In particular, the Jason’s Thirty Theses deal with an entirely different kind of model than a single pinnacled, all-roads-lead-to-Rome. For this model, one should look more to examples of ecological damage and tipping points/keystone species in creating an environmental crash.

Other than that, I think you are right… there will be time for Chicken Little and the Ostrich… the big question is how much time and will Ostrich ever look up, or Chicken Little look down?

Janene

Comment by Janene — 12 April 2006 @ 5:11 PM
Janene,

That’s what I was trying to say. I guess I was too tired to properly compose my ideas.

Comment by William Carrington — 12 April 2006 @ 8:17 PM
Hey William –

Been there

Janene

Comment by Janene — 12 April 2006 @ 8:35 PM
If you can take what you think is “Permaculture” to a place such as the Bronx, then what you think that is, you can call “Nature Farming” 自然農法 (shizen nou hou - Natural Farming is a poorer translation than Nature Farming) -
Fukuoka, Masanobu has said he’s not (entirely) happy with any of the translations into English before he organised the 1996 English translation himself of his:

1992 神�?�自然�?�人�?��?�命
(”kami to shizen to hito no kakumei”: Soukatsuhen: Wara ippon no kakumei) - translated is
God’s (Buddhist Universal Conciousness type) and Nature’s and humankind’s revolution (peaceful type): Recap/Comprehensive Edition: A Revolution of One piece of Straw.

The English 1996 translation organised by Fukuoka, Masanobu himself is titled as printed on the cover
“The Ultimatium of GOD NATURE:
The One-Straw Revolution
A RECAPITULATION”

A later Japanese edition was:
2001 “�?ら一本�?��?�命 �?括編” (”Wara Ippon no Kakumei: Comprehensive edition/Recapitulation”),”The Ultimatum of God-Nature

See:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/fukuoka_farming/message/3750

I had read the three prior English books nominally by him but substantial altered in translation or in the case of originally 1978 Rodale published “The One Revolution”, actually written primarily by Larry Korn who at least now is not a Fukuoka Farmer but another “Permaculturist” ‘guru’… so go figure for the rest of the meaning of that.
I have been so very fortunate to obtain a copy of & read several times this English translation by Fukuoka and his own commissioned translator, that he is happy with himself, aswell as having got a copy of the picture filled book in Japanese of his travels throughout the planet with seedballs helping to heal the earth, visiting many farms that he admired, attending conferences in the USA as keynote speaker and with some help from the UN such as food regeneration & greening desert(s) in Africa.

Jase

Comment by Jase — 13 April 2006 @ 12:16 AM
Interesting discussion and comments but there appears to be a hell of a lot of arguing about whether collapse will happen or not without anyone defining collapse. There have been references to the collapse of the Roman Empire (and arguments as to how this applies to the current situation). Strangely, this is the first I have heard of a Roman Empire collapse - I always thought it was the decline of the Roman Empire. I’m no historian (and feel free to correct me if I’m wrong) but I thought the decline involved things like strategic withdrawal from various areas until there was bugger all to withdraw from and there was no empire to govern. I personally think that comparisons to ancient civilisations are all well and good but they are not as valid as comparisons to the collapse of modern civilisations.

A couple of these come to mind immediately. Firstly is the collapse of Russia – at the time one of the two world superpowers. While there is no doubt there was a great shake up to Russia’s entire entity, in what really is just a blink of an eye they seem to have moved on and I would consider they are doing much better than hiding in caves and eating each other – there was no 90% reduction in the population and although it was a shock to the Russians themselves, I don’t think the world shook with their decline.

The second example which springs to mind is the British Empire, with the real collapse happening following severe depletion from two world wars and a depression. My mother is English and was a schoolgirl during WWII. She remembers the biggest hardships being after the war during the period of austerity. The late 40’s to early 60’s was when I think the collapse was really happening – things were tough within England and many of the commonwealth countries gained their independence during this time. If you have a look at England now and try and tell me they have reverted back to third world country status with subsistence farming, famine and pestilence then I’m happy to strike up an argument on those grounds. There was no decimation of the population during these times either. There are many other countries which have literally rebuilt themselves after WWII (Japan, Germany etc) and they have not languished in third world misery.

A final point is regarding the doomsayers and TEOTWAWKI. Maybe its time to look at the world from a global point of view and realise there is a world outside the lower 49. I see the problems with peak oil affecting the US and affecting first world countries to some extent but the whole world? I think not. I remember reading not long ago (and have lost my source so if you have a source or different figures please feel free to give them) that more than half of the worlds population have no electricity and 65% have never made a phone call. These are also the people who have no cars and subsist. I think these people are likely to benefit from an oil crisis because there will no longer be first world b*stards interfering with their lives – imposing GM technology on them they can’t afford, introducing medical and technological marvels which throw their civilisations totally out of whack etc.

So if it is going to be TEOTWAYKI maybe it is time to get to know the world a bit better. If it is going to be TEOT United States AWKI, how recognisable will the US be afterwards. Will the collapse be as bad as the collapse of some countries after WWII? Will it be as bad as the depression? Will it be worse? Bottom line is we have to figure out what a 21st century collapse is before we argue whether we are going to have one or not.

Cheers,

Dust - Watcher of great sunsets

Comment by Dust — 13 April 2006 @ 12:31 AM
Dust, I understand your argument, and the estimates for those living without electricity & other more modern tech’s were estimated to be about 1/3rd of the global population.

Peak Oil will continue to haunt much of the world, the issue is not weather every single human will be effected by collapse (since some areas of the world are clearly in collapse–by 1st world standards especially).

Collapse is primarily referenced here not as an apocolypse, but rather as a major breakdown of the ’systems/heirarchies’ influence over the masses (and the systems ability to provide the basic neccessities of life).

The ‘collapse’ will likely be more violent/noticeably destructive in 1st/2nd world nations. But very few nation states will go unscathed, either by increased war/conflicts–or by the limited food distribution.
1st world countries provide many food products to 3rd world nations, in exchange for oil (sometimes).

Argentina is an example of a semi-collapse state, its example thus far this century might provide some insights as to what to expect during an incremental breakdown, rather than some overnight ‘collapse’ scenario that is probably a far fetched prediction.

Comment by Bubba — 13 April 2006 @ 7:09 AM
Thanks Bubba,

I guess a prime example as you describe it would be Iraq. Unfortunately this is also an example of how oil is likely to be a factor in future conflicts.

In cases like Argentina where we are witnessing an incremental breakdown, I would guess this provides more of an opportunity to be able to turn a predicament around if individuals can create a critical mass to be able to be heard and politicians make bold enough decisions to benefit the future (unlikely unless individuals reach enough of a critical mass to be able to vote them out).

I liked the article on this site about peak wood. In this era of ridiculously high consumption, I would expect many other minerals/primary goods to peak as well. The recent spike in silver might just be an example (only guessing).

I still think that from an oil perspective, the US stands out as particularly vulnerable. The whole consumption pattern, urban planning, transportation etc. seems to be based around oil and with the US$ currently the sole petrodollar, this puts them in a precarious situation. While many other countries will be hurt, will this hurt come from peak oil or is it more likely to come from the collapse of the US economy (I’m from Australia and the stockmarket report on the news every night always seems to explain a fall or a rise in the local market as a result of the previous days trading in the US)?

Cheers,

Dust

Comment by Dust — 13 April 2006 @ 8:17 AM
Hey Dust –

For a really comprehensive understanding of ‘collapse’ as it is discussed here, I’m afraid you’re going to have to do some significant reading — because the argument for collapse, including descriptions of the different factors, historical precedents and the current peer-polity system have been the primary topics of discussion for some months. Jason has written his Thirty Theses to develop these arguments, plus you may want to look at We all Fall Down for a discussion of Russia and other instances of modern collapse, and Timeline of Collapse for an analysis of the current state of affairs worldwide. There’s more, but I don’t want to totally overwhelm you

Janene

Comment by Janene — 13 April 2006 @ 9:01 AM
Dust,

I suppose my bias comes from the fact that I live in the US. The US is a huge country, and has limited mass transit, most products travel via Semi-Trucks, and to a lesser degree trains.

The US as the largest consumer of oil & the most complex society, will likely fall the hardest/the quickest. Thus, my comments on this site, and some of my doomsday thought pattern is flavored by not only statistics but what I see. The lifestyle’s people live, the overly clunky political machinery that does not appear oriented to much more the corporate profits & power grabs at this point.

Although as it stands if the US, UK, much of Europe have an economic collapse>>this will have a major ripple effect across the global economy. The level of interdepedence not only oil, but based on economic involvement and production with so many countries will certainly effect nearly all areas of the globe. From South American coffee bean farmers, to heinous African regimes.

If things fall hard enough, quick enough (say within 5years) paper money, will hyperinflate, and maybe even deflate as people lose all faith in economic activity in its present form.

My hope is that more people will distinguis between “needs” and “wants” in the next few years, and follow a path to rationale simplicity, not only for economic reasons, but to immprove the quality of their lives/emotional well-being/time with loved one’s etc.

It seems that most here believe that a certain level of simplication would be prudent for self/environment–regardless if a collapse is soon, or 30years from now.

But most people only change through dissonance, often times the more severe the dissonance–the more likely people will change. But regardless we are still bound by the biosphere, but most of us have forgotten this…

Comment by Bubba — 13 April 2006 @ 9:15 AM
Janene,
Thanks for your review above of the “Collapse” theories. I guess we each have different internal ideas of what exactly the word “collapse” implies, spanning from extereme die-off of 90% of humanity to minor economic hardships for the less fortunate among us, who as Lady Bush Sr said, are doing as best as can be expected for themselves (when speaking of the New Orleans refugees).

I was thinking more of collapse in terms of the global capitalist system collapsing, similar to the way communism collapsed in the USSR. I was thinking of different regions of the world becoming less organized (less global or continental) and returning more to tribal or feudal war lord camp structures. More specifically, perhaps we can think of Iraq (for example) not as a “backward” country but rather as a “forward in time” region that has been around so long they have gone through all the stages of build-up and collapse, the final stage being that they are so weakened that outsiders can now easily invade and take over their resources (oil). Iraq may be viewed as a region in the end stages of collapse and not as a place where “Freedom” is miraculously “on the march”. Now, after invasion, the various tribal factions are consolidating power for themselves and battling with each other for what little will be left. That’s how it ends, not with a bang but with inter-factional kill off.

Comment by step back — 13 April 2006 @ 12:49 PM
Step Back,
I think you can rule out the ‘minor economic hardship’ scenario from the table.
500,000 products, not including the fuel for home heating, cars, sanitation distribution systems, etc. will eventually have such a major impact, that the most mild conclusion would be, major disruptions, and major economic depression, beyond the 1900’s version.

I suggest we figure out how to get those Nano-bots to turn out garbage into oil, then we are goldy’

Comment by Bubba — 13 April 2006 @ 1:21 PM
Hey –

When you describe collapse as different regions of the world becoming less organized (less global or continental) and returning more to tribal or feudal war lord camp structures. that is not too far off from my own thoughts.

But perhaps even those words *look* different to each of us. For example, when you say collapse of the ‘global capitalist system’ I see that as barely the tip of the iceberg. Economics being just a small fraction of the entire system based upon agriculture and hierarchy.

Likewise, when I look at Iraq I can see where one might point to it as having collapsed, but I also see the resources pouring into Iraq from around the world (both from the ‘international community’ and the US in ‘aid’ AND resources brought to bear by the terrorist/freedom fighter factions). So long as those resources are being applied, Iraq will be unable to collapse… it will simply continue to stand in a limbo where nothing works and nothing CAN work until the resource influx gets high enough to fix it OR the resource influx gets low enough to allow the economizing functions of collapse to ‘do thier thang’. If we ever see recovery, then Iraq simply becomes one of the many states facing long term sustainability issues. But so long as it is ‘propped up’ but not ‘recovered’ they will remain in the worst of possible conditions.

Looking at other parts of the world, we see many of the same issues… famine almost always includes international groups getting aid packages together to try and alleviate the problem. And in most cases, those aid pacakges are ‘just enough’ to promote maximum suffering on the population involved. Lucky for these populations, most often the famine is caused by climactic conditions that will, in time, revert and allow the crisis to pass. But in doing so, the stage has been set to create another crisis down the road as varying waether patterns continue to vary.

Anyway, my comments previously meant to illustrate that whether you look at our world as a single, global civilization (which I don’t, but I have seen reasonable arguments for this), or if you see it as a peer-polity system (see Jasons We All Fall Down), the collapse scenario is fundamentally the same and based upon a significant lack of redundancy or adaptabilty to changing circumstances.

Janene

Comment by Janene — 13 April 2006 @ 1:32 PM
Iraq keeps being mentioned as a ‘collapse’ example.
I suppose it could be said that it is at least one form of it, but I think there are much better examples out there.

Pick from a list of 3rd world military dictatorships, with limited access to food & water for the majority (or religious/ethnic minority) of its inhabitants.

Argentina is a good example, ultimately sectarian violence in Iraq still represents power plays, based upon a relative ability to get food & water.

Even most religious zealots, if hungry & thirsty will take a break in blowing eachother up, to acquire the basics. I don’t hear of violence in Iraq for food, but more for terror, destroy any national political movement, b/c they hate USA, hate ethnic majority/minority etc.

Once Iraq has no American military presence, and No means to sell oil for food etc., then it will be truly collapsed. Right now just add it to the long list of FAILED/FAILING nation states.

IF You consider Sustainable living>>you can pretty much add every Nation State to the list, that’s essentially the problem, and our current economic system is inherently unsustainable.

Even Feudal lords need to cover the basic needs of living, or try and raid those that have food/water.

Oh well, I’m getting tired of pondering about the future…it will be here soon enough, how about more info/insights on skills, sustainable lifestyles, balancing working in civilization–while trying to prepare for collapse (based upon your own personal view of collapse, fear, urgency etc.–clearly everyone will work at a different pace).

?

Comment by Bubba — 13 April 2006 @ 1:50 PM
In response to what Devin wrote earlier about our collective fear of death and its relationship to doomerism, I wanted to bring in the work of Stanislav Grof. He’s a psychiatrist who worked with deeply schizophrenic patients for many years, among other patients, and has developed a model of the psyche based, in part, on the role of the birth trauma in psychological development. He worked with thousands of patients and healers in the induction of non-ordinary states of consciousness, including psychedelics, trance, and shamanic states. Much of that work came from his disenchantment with traditional psychiatry: It has great models for describing the psyche, but even after many years of therapy, few people actually seem to heal. Non-ordinary states are more conducive to healing.

He calls his model the basic perinatal matrix, based on 4 stages of birth. People’s psychological development can often correspond to a page through the 4 states, and sometimes people are arrested or spend long periods being heavily influenced by a particular state. BPM 1 is the blissful state of the developing fetus. BPM 2 is after uterine contractions begin but before the cervix dilates. Grof says,

Thus people who re-experience the stage of birth where they were stuck in the womb before the cervix opened, might identify with different people throughout history who were in a prison, or who were abused and tortured, such as the victims of the Inquisition and people who were in Nazi concentration camps. Similarly, the reliving of the desperate struggle to free oneself from the clutches of the birth canal after the cervix dilated [BPM3] can be associated with images of revolutions and with experiential identification with freedom fighters of all ages.

These experiences of one’s birth can also open into archetypal visions of the collective unconscious. People who feel stuck in the womb [BPM2] can experience themselves as being in hell, with actual experiences of the demonic figures or of infernal landscapes as we know them from mythology and from religious art. Similarly, individuals who re-experience the difficult propulsion through the birth canal at the stage of birth when the cervix is open [BPM3] often describe archetypal visions of various deities who represent death and re-birth such as Osiris, Adonis, Attis, Persephone, and Dionysus. They might also have the visions of crucifixion or actually experience death and resurrection in full identification with Jesus Christ.

A good example of BPM3 is the art of H.R. Giger. The final state, BPM4, is a transcendant one, that of leaving the mother and entering a new world.

I believe this culture, and perhaps civilization, is in the later stages of BPM 3. (I must credit my wife, Kiel, a Grof-trained therapist, with this idea.) Witness our obsession with sex, violence, speed, aggression, and all the other hallmarks of individuals who are stuck in that birth phase. It’s not just the death, the “put me out of my misery�? we hunger for. We unconsciously understand and crave what will follow, the rebirth that is at the end of the struggle. I suspect that is why so many people are captivated by the doomer idea. This is not to discount Anthropik’s work on collapse; just to bring in another aspect. It’s also why I suspect the cultural rebirth will not be a return to foraging; it will be something new.

On a personal note, I have done a good deal of work with Grof-trained therapists in non-ordinary states, and have had one major, and several minor, death-rebirth experiences. The big one was more terrifying than any “real�? experience I’ve ever had, but one result is that I am far less afraid of death than I was. Death/rebirth is also the natural way of things. People disconnected from natural cycles, as Devin says, will be more terrified of death and will prefer to “live on their knees rather than die on their feet.�? I’m in complete agreement that when we talk about the end of the world, we’re really speaking of our own personal story.

Comment by Toby Hemenway — 13 April 2006 @ 2:18 PM
Well said, Bubba. We should be pondering a bit more about the present. Hopefully if we do, our children won’t have quite so many reasons to hate us later.

Not to overly pimp my site, nor to diss Anthropik, but that’s the idea over at GettingPrimitive

I love Anthropik and I find it a tremendous resource in terms of academic analysis applied to issues of anthropology and collapse. I’m jealous of Jason’s writings. But I’m a suburbanite with kids. Very few of my kind will be running out to start their own tribes. We’ll be scrambling for survival strategies while the slippery slope gets steeper every year. No one really needs theories and graphs to tell them that things are bad and getting worse. Look up. Smell the desperation. The die-off has already begun.

In the harsh light of day, my interests are less on collapse itself, and more on surviving *now* in a physically toxic and psychologically unbalanced environment, simplifying, purifying, powering down, learning the skills necessary to be more self-sufficient, and preparing to handle even more radical shifts in the future.

You are welcome to come check us out, hopefully you will find some things useful, or maybe contribute some tips for others.

- S.

Comment by Sisyphus — 13 April 2006 @ 2:41 PM
Thanks, S. I agree with your sentiment, these are the issues that I find to be most pressing. We are nearly starting month 5 of 2006.

Too bad there was not a concise “transitional handbook” which covered work, skills, psychology, foodstuff, environmental considerations etc. I suppose it would be amazingly difficult to do so, since we all have so many varied economic/geographic and family situations.

Some feel alone out there, being the only person they know who actually considers this stuff in their real life.

Others have a very small group. Maybe some have a large group, but these must be pretty rare at this point.

Tough decisions, faced humanity since the beginning, hard choices will have to be made, but perhaps you can
soften the landing if we can all decondition ourselves, and pursue simplification/frugality–while attaining skills. But a time frame remains an issue, if you think you have 20years, you will take your good old time, or put it off, but if you think you have 4years, you may kick things into gear?

Some will say hell with it, too much trouble, enjoy life while you can, and let the gods sort it out.
But most who post on this sort of site, are not that sort.

Comment by Bubba — 13 April 2006 @ 3:23 PM
Bubba says:

“I suggest we figure out how to get those Nano-bots to turn out garbage into oil, then we are goldy’ ”

Its called thermal depolyerization (TDP) and doesn’t use nanobots but temperature and pressure to do in hours what takes geological ages in nature.

There is a small plant in the US which was processing turkey guts using this method. It was recently closed down due to the smell it was creating. I think the cost of processing worked out to be about US $80/barrel. And it has about an 85% efficiency (ie the processing uses about 15% of the energy produced)

This is using one of the ‘richest’ forms of garbage so the conversion rates would be less for many other forms of garbage.

Now I would hate to have people seeing me as someone having blind faith in technology - that’s not me at all. My ideas of solutions lay firmly in the camp of reduced consumption. Nevertheless, it is technologies like these which may be able to soften the blow enough to be able to make a relatively civilised (but undoubtedly still painful)transition.

Cheers,

Dust

Comment by Dust — 13 April 2006 @ 10:30 PM

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