Accelerating My Personal Collapse

Be joyful, 

though you have considered the facts... 

Practice resurrection. 

-Wendell Barry 

In the past month, I've put about 5000 miles on my 1995 Honda Accord. In car-years that's like 5000 x 7. Like a sturdy mule, she's taken a pounding, visiting construction sites across the county. But her most recent ailment was the exhaust system. First, her good looks started to fade but then the sound and smell thickened and then finally her underbelly ballooned into a neighborhood biohazard. My Golden Child, as I call her, turbo-aged into The Kraken in just a few short years of faithful service.

In previous years when I had more fragile mental health, I would have broken down in tears and paralysis as I often did in the face of these kinds of mini life crises: cloogged drain, toilet paper drought, utility shut-off, flooded basement, cat pee on the briefcase, rolled ankle. Practice makes perfect, right? I am reminded of my uncle Ed's sage advice for me when I started my biz, You'll make an excellent entrepreneur if you can map out the worst case scenario and then be okay when it happens, because it probably will. 


The Kraken has one good eye, just like my Honda.



Release the Kraken!!

Luckily, I knew a guy and called in a favor. So, my mechanic friend, who fixes cars in somebody's girlfriend's back yard for cash, really helped me out of a jam. It only took ten days of his procrastinating and me without my car. I spent those ten days riding my bike to the office, reminded once again that Cincinnati is a cool river town, rather than a cruel traffic town. Of course it was only fun once I learned to dress for rain and make peace with the Metro bus drivers. This episode of feeling helpless actually turned into an excellent dress rehearsal for The Collapse, much like the No Impact Experiment that I had planned on participating in anyway... as soon as it was convenient. 

By Collapse, I'm not totally sure what I mean-- no one does. But I'm convinced it is inevitable and already happening. All my hours spent in the car have hammered the point home. I've spent them listening to podcasts by various economists and futurists talking about the big brew of funk that is bubbling over, like the insolubility of the American balance sheet, looming hyperinflation, collapse of the dollar, the ramifications of peak oil and other resource depletion issues (topsoil, phosphorus, uranium, copper), not to mention 200 species' extinctions per day and global weather weirding.

Reluctantly, I've converted into a collapsitarian. This really just means I believe... No... "Believe" is the wrong word-- rather, I finally acknowledge the mathematics, biology, and geology-- that all exponential functions on Mama Earth have their limits. Historical precedent agrees. It just so happens that the point on the curve that I used to acknowledge as collapse happening "way out there" is suddenly right HERE affecting my commute to work. Instead of calling it The Collapse, we might do ourselves a favor by calling it The Transition. That sounds way more fun.

In the book Limits to Growth (1972, by my hero Donella Meadows (et al)), a team of systems analysts ran a "business as usual" simulation which predicted a global collapse between the 21st and 22nd century. Simulations with rosier outcomes required drastic interventions to stem aggregate growth and system overshoot. Those drastic interventions never saw the light of day according to the Limits to Growth: The Thirty Year Update (1992). Remember Kyoto Protocol? Neither does anyone else. 

Since 1972, the "business as usual" data just keeps piling up. Damn those dotted lines!

At this point in the conversation I can feel my brother bitch-slap me, C'mon dude, I'm just trying to have a beer. And he's right! I'm sorry-- I'm not here to proselytize doom and gloom or even educate. It's here that Dimitri Orlov would remind me that anyone who has the time of day to research The Transition is the kind of person who won't do so well in a collapse, anyway. (Which means my candy ass is fried in its current shape. But I'm working on that). Instead, it's the people busy fighting to survive day-in and day-out that are going to continue to survive. These people confront their own personal collapse daily. Never has the misfortune of others felt like such a comfort-- we're in it together boys!

In the sprit of hastening The Collapse and transitioning into a post-petroleum future, I've started crafting my 2013 goals. I've been drafting my Christmas letter, which after a 3 year hiatus, is soon to be the most fucked up Christmas poem anyone's ever received. Neither has anything to do with being naughty or nice or peak coal issues. Both revolve around starting a better conversation around what Charles Eisenstein calls "living in the gift".


The Christmas Letter Uncensorsed Draft 1.0
First, I want to let my neighbors know that we exist as neighbors despite our awkward avoidance of each other over the years. Everyone gets automatic forgiveness of for bad manners, dangerous driving and their politcal yard sign allegiances.


Secondly, we've got your back 24/7/365, in a sort of New Yorky post-9/11, "true spirit of Christmas" kind of way. You want room for your teenage domestic partner and immigrant baby Jesús at the inn? We've got it, baby! In fact, my brother Matti will be moving into our garage. Please don't call the cops and please don't kill us for our tomatoes or gold. We have neither, but together we can work on both. Plus, how could they kill us if we are their go-to source for value-added guacamole or its post-petroleum/ post-Super-Bowl replacement-- Thunderdome Salsa? We may even include some Mad Max Hummus in their care package.

Post-apocalyptic. Thunderdome (with Tina Turner). It could happen to you, but in a good way, hopefully. 

Third, I'll ask for forgiveness for saying something like this Santa Claus character is a big hairy bullshit. What kind of wacked-out out cultural psyche dreams up a superhero who anonymously sneaks into our houses at night, reverse-theiving us into owning junk we don't need, leaving us no opportunity for reciprocity or to thank him or let him know what our real needs are? He's very careful not to leave any trace of connection, which is a sure sign of a society whose members have no need for each other. Ok, the fact that he eats our cookies is his saving grace. But is the Santa Claus fetish the spill-over from the collective fear we have of someone sneaking into our homes to leave us interest bearing debts for all the stuff we actually do need like motherhood, clean water, good health, and education? Should the highest acclaimed moral virtue really be to give anonymously and ask for nothing in return? That sounds more like a poisonous attitude of someone who feels the recipients of their ultra-pure gifts have nothing to offer-- no relationship, no interdependence. Without the need to need each other, we have no community.


Fourth, I'll ask the neighbors if we can use their yards for planting A) a calorie dense staple foods like potatoes, beans, and squash and B) a nutrient dense food like kale, chard, and herbs. Then, I'll gently plant the seedling of an idea that eventually we will need to rally together and guerilla-garden the ample green spaces around our neighborhood like the local golf courses and baseball outfields. How cool would it be to turn them into fruit orchards and food forrests? I got dibs on the Kentucky bananas.

Have yourself a Needy Christmas and Transitiony New Year!

I feel the need...the need for NEED.

"You can be my wingman anytime." "Bullshit, you can be mine."