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Freeing the World Beneath the Pavement
The reality beyond the trappings of technological society
by Jan Lundberg
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Amidst constant stimuli from the mechanical and artificial environment, we must do our utmost to keep in mind the falsity and impermanence of modern living. What a waste to live our entire lives according to superficial concepts and the greedy agendas of dominators.
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As unlikely and as difficult as it sounds, the goal of such realization is to topple the ruling order, at least inside one’s mind. In our daily lives there is much to ponder and reject, if not escape from. Alternative structures can be accessed and created within the existing system as part of the prelude to the historic socioeconomic transition just ahead.
The profligate energy consumption of U.S. society and the rest of the industrialized world will plummet, taking with it the trappings of modern civilization. World oil extraction is about to taper off, throwing a probably fatal monkeywrench into the growth economy.
What will remain upon collapse, besides social upheaval while people try to provide basic needs - suddenly without petroleum - may not approach the comfort of traditional "harsh" living of a few generations ago that was close to the land. In other words, we should be lucky to end up agrarian, although the ravaged land, air & water and species-loss will be unforgiving.
If enough people construct a way of living free of coercive employment, so as to be independent from oppressive institutions, the result will be tremendous: if not a breaking of the unnecessary government/corporate yoke, then a working model to build upon once the dominant order collapses of its own weight.
Regardless of one’s passionate rejection of the narrow rationale for war, systematic pollution, and virtual slavery, the changing world will serve up a new culture of sustainability - that is, if we can collectively overcome the destruction wrought by the growth economy. There is nothing wrong with economics if it nurtures and is based on local self-reliance. But that’s not what the global economy is about: it’s an extension of the cancer of expansion that Western Civilization has been.
This is a time of failing to recognize the obvious, so most of us wallow in confusion. When the sheer fact of overpopulation in these United States is denied, and when destructive technology is allowed to multiply as if such a state of affairs is natural and inevitable, the mental health of the individual and of society in general is to be questioned. To deny the U.S. is overpopulated is to claim the Emperor is wearing clothes when he is naked. However, it is politically incorrect and a non-funder (as in, "nonstarter") to admit to domestic overpopulation. But anyone can explore the source of our huge population’s sustenance, and see it comes from guzzling petroleum. When it dries up, population will plummet as the economy is toppled and materialist society disintegrates. That appears to be when overpopulation will be admitted universally.
Political and personal response
For now, we are surrounded and buried by material and societal stuff that masquerades as reality. It is soooo weird to trudge through the artificial world day after day and pretend it’s normal and all right. Poets and artists relate to such feelings, and they express themselves accordingly. What does it all mean politically? It’s what we make of it.
The way we view the world is the key to understanding not just our history, our crises and our fate, but what our power is this moment. "A revolution is possible if we see ourselves equal to and not above 'things' around us: air, water, soil, plants, animals, light," says Tony. Pereira, a Los Angeles-based sustainable architecture and engineering activist, and UCLA masters candidate. He says, "'Things' around us, plants and animals, fought and evolved under the same 'conditions' as humans now do, and for a much longer time period. They, we all face sudden inexorable death. Who's to say that the smallest bacteria or virus has any less powers than we do?"
A revolution of such deep magnitude would dwarf the petty political aims of those who want the pie redistributed, especially when it is "an arsenic pie" in the words of the Depaving Guru, a.k.a. Richard Register of Ecocity Builders.
Some of us have the self-appointed job of examining and clarifying our common predicament and anticipating what’s next in our social evolution. We speak up for the other species not taken into account when the better paid environmentalists imagine a future of cleaner cars, for example. We join in the streets activists who feel the injustice of the kill-for-oil, global-warming foreign policy of the U.S.-led juggernaut of world trade. It is vital, however, to begin the alternatives now so that models are in place when the peak in world oil extraction is suddenly felt, or a financial meltdown triggers collapse.
This week, after the revelations of U.S. torture in Iraq, coupled with genocide against Iraqis such as in Fallujah, the future looks like collateral damage is going to hit U.S. society where it hurts, or even cripple it - whether or not retribution is called terrorism.
Renouncing petroleum gluttony today could begin to apologize for what the western industrialized nations have done to Iraq, Arabs and Muslims. Such conciliatory and ecologically sound "foreign policy" from individuals and communities could go a long way toward peace and defusing the tension that the U.S. and U.K. have wrought upon the whole world.
Do what you can. A song by Dana Lyons, Willy Says, quotes a Lummi Indian elder who says "There's a world beneath the pavement." Sing today of a future full of freedom, even if we might not be there to enjoy it.
- – Jan Lundberg
This piece was Culture Change Letter #62
See the website of Tony
Pereira, ME, EIT
Read Richard Register's How
to Depave the World.
Enjoy Dana Lyons and get
his musical recordings.
If you are interested in receiving Culture Change's e-letter you can sign up to get Culture Change Letter directly, by clicking here: E-Letter
Jan Lundberg, co-founded the Lundberg Letter, called "the bible of the oil industry," in 1973. Mr. Lundberg ran Lundberg Survey Incorporated for the petroleum industry, utilities and government. He founded the Sustainable Energy Institute (SEI) in 1988.
We promote and practice cultural change as key to sustainability. Does economic growth via fossil fuels and materialism provide real security? A sustainable society features car-free living and growing food locally. Communities must return to self-sufficiency for food and energy.
Culture Change and SEI:
P.O. Box 4347
Arcata
California 95518
USA
E-mail: info@culturechange.org
Website: www.CultureChange.org
Published by Sustainable Energy Institute, a nonprofit charity 501(c)(3) California corporation.
Useful link: dieoff.com
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