There is an another way to make a living that enables you to do what you love and save the world at the same time. I call it the “middle way” of making a living between our modern industrial system and hunter gathering. This is a deep subject that deserves to have several books written about it.

Saving the World and Sustainability

What do we mean by saving the world? We mean humanity continuing in some fashion without taking tens of millions of species down with us. Today our culture is solely responsible for the greatest mass extinction since the death of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. I say, “our culture,” because humanity has lived in harmony with the earth for three or four million years. The problem is not humanity. The problem it is our culture, our growth, and how we make a living.

Some believe that sustainability involves living in a manner that does not diminish the prospects of future generations. That is an “all about humanity” definition that needs to be discarded.

True sustainability has our species, like all others, living in harmony with the ecosystem or Gaia. True sustainability is measured by the growth, not of human population, but of top soil and biodiversity. These two are the only evolutionarily proven measures of sustainability, and have nothing to do with humanity’s success or failure. Permaculture, by allowing succession and by using natural structures such as a forest or old field, is the best examples I know of that both builds top soil and allows for species biodiversity growth.

Why do we need the other species? In some respects we don’t. But in the long run we do. We need the full resilience of the earth’s ecosystems to adapt to an ever changing world. I also believe that the true measure of our intellect is not what we can take or build, but what we can nurture and leave alone.

Yes, we may be the first to reach this level of consciousness, but the question is are we going to be the last, or are we the mentors for those that will follow over the next few million years?

Honestly, for this to happen our modern monoculture and civilization most likely is going to have to be replaced by a wide diversity of earth friendly cultures. Humanity may be able to continue in a powered down version of what we have for the next 10-20 years. If our culture manages to survive in the long run, it will be in a monoculture desert of our own making. The sad thing is that future generations will not know or appreciate what it was like today just as we don’t know what it was like 200-300 years ago.

Tribal Way of Making A Living

A tribe is a group of people working together to make a living, sharing equally, and with no hierarchy. Generally, tribes are fewer than 150 people. British anthropologist Robin Dunbar theorized this number of people to be the limit with whom we can maintain stable social relationships in which we know each person. He suggests that numbers larger than this require more restricted rules, laws, and enforcement.

All profits, losses, and finds are shared equally. Decisions are made by consensus. It appears that ownership, at least initially, is not so important when getting started. However, since private property leads to hoarding and is a disincentive to sharing, it should be eliminated. All non-household assets should also be communal or part of the commons.

A New Ethic and World View

Here is where it starts to get new. We need to embrace a new world view or honestly remember the original one. Chief Seattle in his 1854 speech and Daniel Quinn in his book Ishmael taught that the world is a sacred place and humanity has a place in it. Another way of saying this is that humanity belongs to the earth, our ecosystem, and Gaia.

This is the opposite of the world view that our ancestors created 2,000 years ago that humanity is flawed, we are sinners, and the earth is a proving ground to see whether we are worthy to go to a better place when we die. This belief gave us a “dominion” which we have to relinquish if we, or at least, most of the other species are going to survive.

Permaculture is also based on three central ethics:

1. “Care of the earth” means that our number one priority is taking care of the earth, making sure we don’t damage its natural systems.
2. “Care of the people” means meeting people’s needs so that people’s lives can be sustained and have a good quality of life as well but without damaging the earth.
3. “Accepting limits to population and consumption” is realizing that as a human species we cannot continue to increase and also sustain the planet. Sometimes you will hear this ethic phrased as “share the surplus, invest all of your means in the first two ethics.” This means limiting your consumption so that you can invest your resources in caring for the earth and caring for the people.

These ethics translate to making a living in a way that does not participate in destruction of the earth. This means more than not starting a toxic chemical or genetic engineering lab.

This may mean that will have to shift back to giving support to get support instead of making things to get things. A healthy self reliant local community focusing on each other and on giving support will provide greater cradle-to-grave security than our “all about me” culture.

If we are going to make products, they need to be made and consumed by the local community, bioregion, or watershed. If products are made for export and not just local use, the level of consumption will again lead to the despoiling of local resources. I see this just driving around Oregon and Washington in the form of missing forests.

Produce what you need now and some reserves, but not a large surplus that can be concentrated. If you concentrate resources or work within a hierarchy, you again will encourage hoarding, and take away the incentive to share.

Develop Community Self Reliance

One of the keys to the success of the Amish is that they do not operate in a way that creates entanglements with modern culture. Their aversion is more about the entanglement and not so much against technology. For example, the Amish use wood wheels which they can manufacture and repair themselves. They do not use rubber wheels because they don’t want to be dependent on modern culture. The Amish have nothing against rubber, but they do not want to be dependent upon us.

No individual or even a small group of people can be an island. It will take enough people working together as a community to bring one or both legs out of modern culture. Maybe one will have to work a day job while building skills and a tribal business with your friends. This will be a process not an overnight revolution. Remember though, petrocollapse will not conform to a gradual or delayed schedule for our convenience.

Set Aside Time for Yourself

Start by doing what you love to do. You will become good at it, enjoy your work, and will make the biggest impact with your life that way.

Don’t work more than maybe 30 hours per week. This not only allows for employment of more people, but it gives you time to work on yourself, to study, grow, explore, and self-actualize. This is part of the reason our culture is stuck where it is. People are worked so much and not given a holistic education to think for themselves. Develop your vocabulary, arts, music, mental constructs, travel, and just general self-actualize. So powerdown, give away a bunch of your stuff, and reduce your overhead.

How to Get Started

Based on my experience as an entrepreneur, I would say follow the path of least resistance and watch for serendipity. Try multiple things and see which one gets the most traction. Walk before you run. Try your ideas on a part-time or hobby basis before committing. You could start with your neighbors and each could plant a different fruit or nut tree and you could exchange harvests in the fall. Create a micro-neighborhood edible perennial nursery business. The possibilities are endless. Have fun with it.

One idea I am considering is to start by creating a virtual community. We cannot all move in next door to each other overnight, but like-minded people could put their properties into a land trust for the benefit of the community. It may also be easier to coalesce closer together over time as the opportunities arise.

At Restoration Farm we are trying to build a tribal permaculture farm. We hope to be mostly chemical and fossil fuel free. The fossil fuels we use are largely for infrastructure setup and not so much for planting and harvesting. We will be experimenting with U-pick blueberries and food forest, and compost for reduced food cost models.

In regards to finding like-minded people, try hosting a potluck to discuss neighborhood sustainability. See who shows up. Learn about permaculture, and consider taking a two week intensive permaculture design course (PDC). You will meet your tribe of like-minded people there.

Finding a benevolent way of making a living that allows you to do what you love and to not participate in the destruction of the world is a journey of a lifetime.

Visit www.culturequake.org to read the blog, visit the Culturequake amazon.com book store, and learn more about the book Culturequake: The Fall of Modern Culture and the Rise of Earth Culture. ©2009 Chuck Burr LLC

Notes:

Daniel Quinn
Ishmael

Wikipedia
Dunbar’s Number

Susan Blackmore
The Meme Machine

John Hostetler
Amish Society

Jan Lundberg
As surely as the red sun rises: Rebelling against extinction

Toby Hememway
Gaia’s Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture

Geoff Lawton
The Permaculture Research Institute of Australia

Peter Bane
Permaculture Activist

What is the meaning of life? Where do we go when we die? What is god? Important and unimportant questions for all of us. Here are my best guesses to these and other life centering questions.

Humanity’s Purpose

We are really here literally to balance the life process of plants. At one point in the earth’s evolution, the atmosphere literally became so toxic with oxygen which burned and destroyed everything it touched. Our early ancestors were invented by Gaia to reverse the creation of the toxic gas we call oxygen that plants give off in the process of photosynthesis. By reversing one of the moves in the dance of photosynthesis, a new process could be born–one that could take the toxic gas, and use it to bum food and make energy.

Breathers were born, those who dine on the sunlight-harvesters, burning their bodies as fuel for life. In burning food, the breathers give off carbon dioxide, which the plants, with the help of the sun, transform to food again. And the plants give off oxygen, which the breathers use in burning food. Gaia began to breathe, passing her breath back and forth from red to green, continuing to build up oxygen, to transform herself. We are the breath of Gaia.

We are also food for plants and the other microbes the bring the soil to life. We fix nitrogen when we pee, and we create compost when we poop and die.

Larger Brain

The real question is why did Gaia create the experiment of a large frontal lobe and opposable thumbs? The thumbs enable primates to adapt to a wider range of living conditions by eating a wider of foods and to making tools.

The primate brain really only has to be as large as paleolithic man to adapt to wider environmental conditions. The larger frontal lobe grown on top of the mammalian brain which rests on top of the reptilian brain is another question al together.

The agricultural revolution may have been the point where we really put the large frontal lobe to work. Ten thousand years ago we made a shift that extended our role as oxygen and plant consumers to consumers of everything. This is may also have been the point where to developed to individual ego that defines modern culture today.

The real question unanswered so far is, why the big brain? The answer may be domination. Homo sapiens probably used their larger brain size to exterminate neanderthal man. We are of course doing the same directly and indirectly to the 30 million other species we share this planet with today. This must stop, but how?

Modern Purpose of Life

The truth be told, modern culture has become a cancer of indefinite growth upon Gaia. Just as a tumor in your body, our culture has made humanity malignant to Gaia’s body. Humanity itself is not harmful to the earth. Humanity has existed in one form or another for 3 to 4 million years. But, our Taker culture made humanity cancerous 10,000 years ago at the birth of the agricultural revolution.

Gaia will go on without us after we have taken ourselves out. The point is that we are going to take down tens of millions of other species with us. Our culture is solely responsible for the greatest mass extinction since the death of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. No matter how green, groovy, or native we get, this cannot be stopped unless we reduce our population to a fraction of what it currently is—probably to preindustrial pre-oil levels of 1 billion.

The purpose of life today, now that Gaia is entering stage four cancer, is to find an antidote to the agricultural revolution. Maybe what we need is the un-revolution to find a way back to an evolutionarily proven symbiotic way of life. I don’t know how much of our Taker culture can be saved, but if humanity is around in another 10,000 years, it will have a lot more Leaver culture in it than Taker.

Other simple truths include, live your truth and enjoy life, but don’t do it at the expense of your relations. Also, survive yes, but don’t breed beyond your number.

Modern culture through its human constructed reality has also disconnected us from our truth and created our sense of lack. Every cell in our bodies knows we should live in symbiosis with our ecosystem. The five or six kingdoms of life of monera, protista, fungi, plants, animals have developed over four billion years to form the self-regulating system of life on earth we call Gaia.

Humanity evolved over three or four million years living in harmony with Gaia. As Chief Seattle inferred in his 1854 speech, the earth does not belong to man, humanity belongs to the earth.

All in all, humanity has to go through what we will to see if we come out the other side. The crux is, that the exuberance of our modern culture just happens to have caught up with us during our generation. Now is the time the rainbow warriors to awaken to save us. We may be of the rainbow.

Where we fit in the Universe

First, we will probably never know where the universe came from, so you can makeup your own story.

What we do know is that we are made of stardust, all of the calcium in our bones, the iron in our blood, and the carbon in our bodies came from stars that lived and died before our sun was born.

Did you also know that you are a walking microbial colony? Over 90 percent of the genes and cells in your body are foreign. Humans are born sterile with no bacteria, but start being colonized from the instant we break from the womb. Of the 110 trillion cells in your body, 100 trillion are not human. Most human cells are concentrated in the brain, blood stream, and organs.

The other thing that is striking to me is that when I look at the human brain from the outside and section of it, it looks like some mushrooms or colonies of bacteria. We take this great symbiosis of Gaia and our bodies largely for granted.

The Fire of Life

When we die, we pass the fire of life on to others through our compost. Where we go then we will not know until we pass through the psychedelic experience we call death.

Life on earth is based on the sacred circle of birth, growth, death, and regeneration. Life begets life, but not in the way the Bible tells us. Sure rabbits make rabbits. But what is a rabbit? A rabbit is the grass. A lynx is the grass—soil, grass, rabbit, one. Only temporal reality separates them until they tumble through Gaia’s sacred cycle of life.

The fire burns forever. It is the flame of life that courses through all generations from first to last, that burns without consuming, that is itself consumed and renewed inexhaustibly, life after life, generation after generation, species after species, galaxy after galaxy, universe after universe, each sharing in the blaze for its season and going down to death while the fire burns on undiminished. The fire is life itself, the life of this universe, of this galaxy, of this planet, of this place and every place: the place by the rock and the place under the hill and the place by the river and the place in the forest, no two alike anywhere. And the life of every place is god, who is the fire: the life of the pond, god; the life of the tundra, god; the life of the sea, god; the life of the land, god; the life of the earth, god; the life of the universe, god: in every place unique, as the life of every place is unique, and in every place the same, as the fire that burns is everywhere

Heaven or More?

I don’t believe we get a do-over or happy nirvana after this life consciousness. The vision is much grander than an ego-centric blissful cloud city awaiting believers.

Yes, we become compost when we die, but we don’t go as ourselves somewhere else or are reborn as a rabbit or human.

When we change forms to compost and leave this consciousness and reality we rejoin the fire of life that gave birth to us. We return to our mother Gaia and the universe. We become part of all life, as we always have been. Even when we are alive or conscious, we are part of Gaia’s breath and digestion. Breathers and sunlight-harvesters breathing in and out as we live.

God

God is a sacred word for all of the known and unknown universe. Since only 4 percent of the universe is visible and the remaining 96 percent is made up of dark matter and energy, that leaves a lot of unknown. For me that is better; it leaves infinite possibilities.

Life’s Truths are Simple

Look at a child. When they are young, they have it right, then our cultural programming and peer pressure take over, but until then they are their original selves. We have to get back to that, to undoing the programming.

For me, I now know that I am made of stardust and that I am part of the fire of life that will burn on forever in all life. I am not one, I am all life. These truths are simple.

Visit www.culturequake.org to read the blog, visit the Culturequake amazon.com book store, and learn more about the book Culturequake: The Fall of Modern Culture and the Rise of Earth Culture. ©2009 Chuck Burr LLC

Notes:

James Lovelock
The Ages of Gaia: A Biography of Our Living Earth

Starhawk
The Earth Path, p 44.

Elisabet Sahtouris and James Lovelock
Earthdance: Living Systems in Evolution

YouTube, Christopher Buck
The Rainbow Warriors

Colin Nickerson, The Boston Globe
Of microbes and men, Bacteria disappearing from our bodies may harm human health
Graphic Your Body: A ‘colony of creatures’

Wikipedia
Kingdom (biology)

Nancy Zussy
Chief Seattle Speech: Washington State Library, Version 3

Michael Dowd
Thank God for Evolution

Daniel Quinn
Providence, p 181.

Wikipedia
Dark matter

The New Cultural Enlightenment

It takes connecting so many dots about the nature of our existence, our past, present, and future to make it to the center that very few do. Once you can connect enough dots, can see them in your head, and even rotate the constellation of links, visioning and choosing the direction for your journey becomes effortless—live your truth.

A new kind of enlightenment is emerging. Classic enlightenment involves expansion of consciousness and dissolving the ego to realize our oneness with the universe. It is to step out of temporal and physical reality into nothingness and everythingness. We realize that we are not unique and that tens and hundreds of thousands of generations have lived and have experienced every emotion that we ever will.

The new enlightenment goes a step further in new directions through an early doorway of unveiling to being able to see our constructed or consensus reality culture for what it is—a trap of our own making. By constructing a realty apart from the ecosystem we cut ourselves off from our ability to live from it, we become trapped and are separated from the divine or the source.

The illusion of free will is essential to the perpetuation of modern culture. People have to believe they are able to control their lives when in reality the suburbs are just prisons without bars. Every job is wage slavery because the agricultural revolution locked up the food. If you don’t work, you don’t eat. Fear is the control system which cuts us off at the knees and prevents us from engaging in true self-exploration and expansion of consciousness. Fear is the fuel for modern Taker culture.

Schools are designed to break the individual and end creative thinking, “sit down, be quite, and do what what your told.” Despite education, knowledge and hierarchy remain deeply stratified. The new enlightenment sees through this trap, and sees the way out.

Animism and the Fire of Life

Classic enlightenment includes an appreciation for how thin the ice of consciousness that we skate on is. One recognizes how fragile, fleeting, and precious the fire of life is. We call this appreciation that our ancestors had before the agricultural revolution “animism.” All living beings experience reality to some level. Even plants “feel” sunlight and respond so it. One of the greatest tragedies of our Taker culture is it’s lack of empathy for all of our “relations,” and how it turns other species into commodities to be consumed.

For me, my god has a small “g”. It can be killed with a bulldozer. It is the fire of life in the meadow. I know that the grass, deer, rabbit, bird, and soil are all one. Birth, growth, death, regeneration—one. You can learn more about how the world works at a weekend gardening class on compost than from four years of seminary.

I know how I am also connected all the way back to the creation of the universe. The calcium in my bones, the iron in my blood, and the carbon in my body all came from stars that lived and died before our sun was even born. I know I am made of star dust.

The Unveiling

The unveiling is like taking the red pill in The Matrix and seeing our constructed reality, and its affect upon us and the ecosystem. New terms and revelations such as global warming, financial crisis, and the end of security have been added to earlier anti-cultural memes such as pollution, overpopulation, and fractional reserve banking. Some are even expanding such as peak oil is becoming peak everything.

The unveiling is more than recognizing the many problems of our culture, it also means connecting the dots back to how it began, why it succeeds, and forward to the solution for the individual and the local community. For instance, we learn that our culture succeeds because it is easy; all you have to do to perpetuate it is consume.

Finding Your Own Key to the Door

The new enlightenment is more than becoming a history buff and understanding what memes makes us us. The trick is to understand the significance of this knowledge and to find a solution to it for you and your community.

Leaving the matrix or our consensus culture is a journey of a lifetime; it will only happen in stages. Did Fukuoka go as far as he wanted? Those in indigenous culture are already on the outside; let’s hope they can stay there. We within the Taker culture have to find the doorway out. For me the next couple steps will be from traditional high energy organic farming to low energy permaculture. From learning, to doing, to writing, to teaching.

But, once you find your way back to the original or the next story, every cell in your body will know it, the greater the resonance.

The Will—Doers

What good is knowledge if you do not live it? There comes a point for those who are ready to turn their journey into a life of action and example. It will take everyone’s contributions to expand the ring of consciousness: depavers, permaculturists, teachers, activists, reporters, bloggers, healers, on and on.

This tool of the Internet, may be the lever that has been missing. We are at the forefront of a complete media and cultural consciousness replacement. Fringe ideas like this blog can be freely distributed globally, are uncontrolled, and entirely non-underwritten. For instance, this blog has been read in 72 countries this year in 2009.

Cultural Singularity

When we reach the tipping point where our culture dissolves away into may new visions or cultures, and cultural singularity will have been reached. It may take another 10,000 years to reach this point. It won’t happen soon because we are only beginning to realize that we have to find ways out of our Taker culture, let alone having invented the alternative lifestyles needed to walk away.

Remember, you cannot encourage someone to leave modern culture unless you have a viable alternative to the constructed reality.

What many people feel is about to happen is actually a mass unveiling. Today, our first world society is broken into thirds or rings. One third thinks things will continue to get better, growth is the answer, and progress and a technological singularity will save us. The second third can feel it in their bones that something is wrong, but they cannot put their finger on it. The last third are a mix of everything from those starting to realize that growth is over, believing that going green will save us, doomers, and even conspiracy theorists. We all have a long way to go; many today are starting the journey to look first for answers and then for solutions.

Most doomers do also agree that humanity will survive anything, adaptability is our skill. Conspiracy theorists have to realize that as long as our culture has among it goals maximizing profit and concentrate wealth, any group of people who have never even met will appear to coordinate their efforts.

Those ahead of the curve are not a gurus—they are just doers. We are the ones who have taken the risk to live our truth. We are the ones inventing the alternatives. Most of our ideas will fail, but eventually some will work, and will unlock the doors for the others to follow.

Dedication

This essay is dedicated to the Culturequake community, my loyal readers, the 3,000 new readers this month, and to my mentor the Hobbit—Thank you.

Essays will be less frequent during the farming season. We are working about six or seven days a week getting the Restoration Farm and permaculture site up and running. People are right when they say it takes three years to get an organic farm to show any form of profit. It takes three to five years to get fruit trees yielding and five to seven years for nuts. Thanks too everyone involved the project.

Also, the point of the Culturequake blog experience is first of course part of my self-discovery journey and living my truth, but for the reader it should not be about the “latest essay.” It should be about the body of work as a whole starting back in he archives up to the present.

Visit www.culturequake.org to read the blog, visit the Culturequake amazon.com book store, and learn more about the book Culturequake: The Fall of Modern Culture and the Rise of Earth Culture. ©2009 Chuck Burr LLC

Notes:

The Matrix
The Red Pill

Aeolus Kephas and Neil “the Cleaver” Kramer
Podcast Stormy Weather 22 and 22.5: The Reader & the Red

Michael Toms named our 2008 New Dimensions Radio interview, “Going Green is Not Enough.” The term was right, and it stuck. Granted, vegetarians and vegans consume far less water and agricultural land per capita than meat-eaters, but that misses the point. There are just too many of us, consuming far to much, and the techno-alternatives being offered are no solutions at all.

A population of 6.7 billion has to be and will be reduced to below pre-1900 levels of 1 billion possibly during this century. There just won’t be the fossil fuels around to support today’s population. You can’t make or even run a diesel tractor with a solar collector, let alone make all of today’s industrial agricultural inputs. You can’t even make a solar collector with a solar collector. You can try to grow ethanol, but it has a negative energy ROI. Biodiesel works, but there won’t be enough to go around.

The countdown for the end of the oil age has just run out 18, 11, 3, 3, zero. Several new large oil ?elds came online in 2005. These were the last of the 500 million barrel mega oil ?elds, since none has been discovered in the past few years. Eighteen new mega projects started producing in 2005, followed by 11 more in 2006. However, 2007 saw the opening of only three new projects, followed by three more in 2008. This will not keep up with declining production or depletion of older ?elds, much less the increase in demand. The end of the natural gas, coal, and nuclear ages will not be far behind.

Fortunately without fossil fuels, our children won’t have the cheap energy to make all of the garbage we made for ourselves. “WEEE Man” was created for the Festival of Nature 2006 in Bristol, U.K. This 21-foot-tall, three-ton sculpture is made of 198 household devices, including five refrigerators, 35 cell phones, and 23 computer mice, representing the lifetime e-waste of the average European. In the U.S. a ton of industrial solid waste is created each week for every man, woman, and child. To top it off, about 95 percent of automobile engine and electric energy production is wasted. In an ecosystem waste equals food, but in industrial society waste just equals waste. Everything we make ends up in the landfill vegan or meat-eater.

Some people hope for a technological singularity to save us. For instance, Jacque Fresco’s Venus Project will save the day. “The Venus Project presents a bold, new direction for humanity that entails nothing less than the total redesign of our culture.” According to Jacque, it will solve, “unemployment, violent crime, replacement of humans by technology, overpopulation and a decline in the Earth’s ecosystems.”

Where is all of this cheap energy going to come from? Nature has been perfecting solar energy production for three billion years and the most efficient solution possible is photosynthesis. The neat thing about nature’s solution is that it makes oxygen, sequesters carbon, creates carbohydrates and sugars, and builds topsoil. Show me a souped-up condominium project that can do that. The future is going to look more like an updated Renaissance Festival than Star Trek. Some wealthy folks will still concentrate resources for a while, but everything wears out and eventually hits the land fill—even the last iPod.

People talk to me about how they want community, but what they imagine as community is glorified social networking. OK, having a lot of friends is fine. But as Bill Mollison says, “look for skills, not money.” What I am trying to get at is that today we need “doers” not “talkers.” We need people who start community supported agriculture coops (CSAs), plant urban food forests, educate, and motivate others. In other words, put their time where their mouth is.

We also need bold people. When your community starts to talk about food security, somebody needs to standup and say, “Hey, we will never have food security until we reverse build-out and reduce our population.” Unless you live in the California Central Valley or in Oregon’s Willamette Valley, you can’t even feed the people you have now with local agricultural resources.

We are so far in overshoot of the planet’s carrying capacity we can’t even see back to former sustainable levels 10,000 years ago before the agricultural revolution. Sustainability means being able to live in an area over the long-term without degrading especially it’s biodiversity. And the only way to do that is to get back to population and consumption levels that don’t require importation of massive quantities of energy, raw materials, and food just to survive. You know you are back within carrying capacity when you are paying back our accumulated ecological debt, and have started to rebuild biodiversity and topsoil.

So, eating vegan and recycling is not going to save the world. Stroll down the isles of your local natural food store and you will find just as much packaging as in a Piggly Wiggly. I honestly don’t think we are going to get it until nature makes her “wake-up call” probably in the next 10-20 years or sooner. This will start to happen when they can no longer find security even if they follow every rule of the system, but still get laid off and lose their house. It is time to tell our children the truth that, “we screwed up and that I will teach you everything I can to do better and to develop a new mindset.”

This will be a community wide effort, even though most of the community does not know it yet. Schools should do their part as well. Instead of teaching our kids about dead presidents, they should teach children how to be more self-reliant, to think outside the box of our culture, to be “doers”, to feed themselves, and to minimize family size. These are some bold steps, but they are the beginning.

The most important point for children is thinking outside the box of our culture. Children need to learn how to do things differently than their parents did. They will need new cultures and cultural stories to replace those we lived by. For instance, encourage them find new ways doing what they love to build a community self-reliance to an extent that they can start to detach from modern Taker culture. Teach your children to work from a sense of joy and look for what they can give instead of take. Give support to get support instead of make things to get things.

Have a neighborhood potluck family friendly and see who is interested and starting a block food forest. It is time to experiment and learn while things are relatively easy. For now, your garden can fail and you can still go to the groovy natural food store.

Visit www.culturequake.org to learn more about the book Culturequake and the blog. ©2009 Chuck Burr LLC

Notes:

Chuck Burr
Going Green is Not Enough

Chuck Burr
Overpopulation is a Cultural Challenge

Al Gore
Earth in the Balance, p. 146, 174

Dale Allen Pfeiffer
Current Situation & 2005 Projections

Khebab
Analysis of Decline Rates

Fritjob Capra
The Hidden Connections: Integrating The Biological, Cognitive, And Social Dimensions Of Life Into A Science Of Sustainability, p 252

Jacque Fresco
The Venus Project

Peter Salonius
Agriculture: Unsustainable Resource Depletion Began 10,000 Years Ago

Industrialized Countries Backslide

If you want to see what the next decade will look like, look no further than France, Ukraine, and Iceland today. This week one to three million people took to the streets of France for a second round of protests against President Nicolas Sarkozy’s handling of the economic crisis. Protests later turned violent as youths clashed with police.

Protests have also erupted in Ukraine. Ukraine’s economy has gone into a nosedive, its banking system is paralyzed and millions of people have lost their jobs in recent months, industrial production has plunged 26.6 percent in the past year, the national currency, the Gryvna, has lost 50 percent of its value since last summer, default on Ukraine’s $105 billion foreign debt may be imminent or barely avoided.

In a 24-page internal memo leaked to the Ukrainian media, Finance Minister Viktor Pynzenyk warned in late January that Ukraine’s economy is on the verge of collapse, “We have entered an extremely serious and deep crisis. Ukraine’s [economic] situation is the worst in the world.”

“It’s a war of all against all,” says Dmytro Vydrin, an independent deputy of the Supreme Rada, Ukraine’s parliament. “Our best hope at this point is that chaos will win out over ill-intentions, because the worst thing will be if one group wins and establishes a monopoly of power.”

In October of last 2008 Iceland’s three largest banks failed unable to pay about $61 billion of debt, 12 times the size of the entire economy. The Iceland banking failure slashed more than two thirds off the value of the krona last year, pushing inflation 20 percent and sending unemployment to a record high. The inflation rate is still high although it fell to 17.6 percent in February, from a 19-year high of 18.6 percent the month earlier.

Worldwide, a wave of social and political unrest could sweep through the world’s poorest countries if G20 leaders fail to come to their aid, the World Bank warns today, March 22, 2009. A new report from the Overseas Development Institute says the a collapse of the global economy would cost developing countries $750 billion in lost output, drive millions more into poverty, lead to an increase to nearly a billion in the number of people going hungry, and cost 90 million lives.

If all of the above spreads to China and Mexico in the form of political instability and disrupts production, there will be a bunch of clueless formerly middle class people wondering what happened to their limitless supply of cheap products to consume.

US May Face Bankruptcy

I will spare you the details of Stimulus’s, TARPs, derivative bubbles, toxic bank asset market plans, and just focus on the big picture.

Ordinarily, U.S. federal spending is about 20 percent of the total Gross Domestic Product (GDP). But as a result of the economic downturn and rapidly increasing spending, federal spending as a percent of GDP has risen by a third to 26 percent. Add state, county, and municipalities, I estimate total government spending to be about 36 percent of GDP. Of the proposed $3.6 trillion 2009 federal budget, almost 40 percent or $1.38 trillion will have to be borrowed because of plunging revenues. Just two years of deficit this size would equal 93 percent of the entire 2008 federal budget.

The end of cheap natural resources compounded by the debt collapse will prevent the future growth needed to pay the interest on federal, corporate, and consumer debt. We are seeing a last ditch spending effort to revive growth while other nations will still lend the U.S. money. After this, it is game over.

President Obama went to Harvard, but it was in law not economics, and even if he studied economics it would have been the wrong kind, universities need to retool and start teaching powerdown and steady-state economics because that is all we will have left within ten years. We will have to develop new economic models that do not rely on indefinite growth to pay interest on our debt.

Don’t be fooled by the Obama-bump in the global casino stock market. The current surge from the toxic assets plan will end soon as it ignores the fact that the government is responsible for guaranteeing half the value of the toxic assets. The toxic assets won’t disappear; they will just be moved from one pocket to another on the taxpayer dime. Its like creating a market to sell shares in the Titanic. Don’t get back in the market. Financial players are running the market back up so they can get out of it.

A U.N. panel will recommend at next week’s G20 summit that the world replace the dollar as its reserve currency in favor of a shared basket of currencies, a member of the panel said on Wednesday, adding to pressure on the dollar. The world knows the dollar will lose its value over the coming years. Last week Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao expressed concern about the outlook for the U.S. and the safety of its Treasury bonds. “We have lent a huge amount of money to the U.S., so of course we are concerned about the safety of our assets. Frankly speaking, I do have some worries.”

A new world reserve currency will be a huge blow to the dollar and may make it more difficult or impossible for the U.S. to finance our hemorrhaging deficit. This week, auction demand for U.S. Government debt was weak and a U.K. auction actually failed. Watch for China also to call for a new reserve currency at next week’s G20 summit.

What We Will See by 2019

Here is a short list of what we are likely to see over the next ten years: The end of the go-anywhere any-day airline industry as we know it. A 20 to 50 percent reduction in long-haul trucking. The mothballing of the international space station. $6-$10 gallon gas and the end of one or all of the big three automakers. Closure of several national retail chains. A DOW of between 4000 and 6000. Pension benefits cut by half. The Great Depression II will not have ended. Resurrection of the “victory garden” now called the “I need to eat garden.” Mass migrations. Reinstatement of the draft to fight resource wars or mandatory national service. Shortages of spare parts. Gas lines and rationing. Ideas such as petrocollapse and a steady-state economy will have joined global warming in mainstream consciousness. With a decline of world oil production of 6 to 9.1 percent per year, we will see GDP drop from $14.58 trillion in 2008 to between $7 and $9 trillion by 2019.

Reaching Limits to Growth by 2019

Our system is the mother of all Ponzi schemes. The three key lynchpins holding it all together will start coming apart in the next decade.

First, the house of cards construction of it requires several “ifs” to all be maintained. For instances, if the system can keep expanding to pay the interest on the debt, if the minority can continue to exploit the majority, if we can continue to find cheap energy and natural resources, if large nation states can be maintained to keep global markets open, if we can continue to operate at a high degree of inefficiency and waste, if we can maintain a consensus and motivation, etc.

Second, because we have put off our problems with economic and cheap energy technology adaptations, it is now becoming more likely that we will run into several of our problems at the same time. Our system will not run out of land or food or resources or pollution absorption capability. What it will run out of is the ability to cope. Today we are witnessing the Obama administration trying to maintain a consensus to spend at ever higher levels to solve our problems. When problems arise exponentially and in multiples, problems that could theoretically be dealt with one by one can overwhelm the ability to cope.

Third, as our population continues to grow, it’s weight upon the house of cards becomes increasingly crushing. More cheap energy, food, land, clean water, transportation, etc. are all needed. What was once a manageable problem at a population of 1 billion, starts to become a catastrophe at 7 billion. At some point limits to growth are reached.

The Future is Unavoidable

With the population we have for at least another generation, our auto-dependent suburban infrastructure, and our infinite growth economic model, we are set up for failure. Every step in the same direction is just digging a deeper hole: more debt, more decaying infrastructure, no real value employment, little population control, hopelessly inappropriate skills and eduction.

We need a shift in our mindset from “the world belongs to man” to “humanity belongs to the earth.” Mainstream consciousness does not yet recognize nor appreciate the great biodiversity of our planet is dying—millions of lost species just when we need the earth’s resilience the most. Our culture teaches us to wear blinders, and only think about “number one.” When we consume or till a field, we do not “see” the life we are taking or the habitat that is lost. We do not see what a field once was or could be if succession was allowed to again progress.

The Only Solution That Will Ultimately Work—One Child Families Through New Culture

Some of the next “solution” sections are touched on in my previous essays. However, about half of my readers are new to Culturequake. Read on if you’re new.

If we are going to engineer a softest landing for the next generation we do need to strive for: a steady-state economy, re-localization and expanded nonprofits, local community, respect for our elders, dissolve the nation-state, indy-media, transition from agriculture to horticulture, and community education—basically a new culture(s). Standardized “no child left behind” should be replaced by “every child can plant a forest garden and feed their family.” But no matter your cause, it is a lost cause without reducing population. Planting a food forest and having four kids is one step forward and four steps backward.

Reducing our population to 1900 levels will go the furthest to a brighter future for our children and our fellow species from whom we have stolen so much. One child families can reduce human population each generation from 6.7 billion, to 3.4 billion, to 1.7 billion, to 838 million and so on all within one century. Everyone will still be able to nurture a loving family.

Change Has to Come From the Bottom Up

Change will not come from top-down centralized governments. Nation states protect assets of the wealthy, tilt the table to concentrate wealth up, and just do not inspire local change. We have to let go of the nation state, and re-localize more than just our food production. This will mean fewer big box stores and gadgets, but also a better future.

My own family is trying to make the transition now from consumers to food forest farmers and educators. It’s hard because our society does not give us alternatives. It’s, “get a job or we don’t give you any happy juju points to buy food or stuff with.” “Free land, forget it.” “Here, stare at this light box five hours per day, and zone out watching 21,000 commercials per year.” “Sit down, shut up, and don’t ask questions in school.” “Don’t save your seeds, buy this new and improved variety from us.”

Restore the Original Cultural and Economic Model

Moving towards a stead-state economy is an important first step, but it is only the beginning. It is time to dump the agricultural revolution economic model of privatizing the land, locking up the food, forcing people to get a job and work for the system just to live and eat. Humanity’s anthropocentrism and dominion have gotten us where we are today: hot, dry, and crowded.

It used to be that you “give support to get support;” now it is “make things to get things.” The new agricultural revolution or Taker model leaves us unfulfilled, and destroys the planet’s biodiversity. The original model worked for three million years until the agricultural revolution. Small tribal communities provided cradle-to-grave security for everyone. No Medicare card required. The beauty is that thousands of different cultures used this model for millions of years, plus it works for the average person. You didn’t have to be a walking Buddha or the second coming to be fulfilled, happy, and supported by your community.

So What Do We Do Now?

Find like-minded people and start the multi-generational journey to find more ways to support each other. Unplug from the matrix; unplug from your television and the private property debt treadmill. Create community and land trusts. Make things up as you go. Repurpose the best skills to support your community. Plant a food forest instead of an annuals only garden; emphasize perennials. Work from a sense of joy.

The majority is not ready to unplug from the system until it sees repeated examples of a better way to live—of new cultures. They need see a workable solution to our “forced” work system. People also need to walk towards something better, not away from something bad. For those already becoming the change we want to see, we will be the inspiration for those who follow.

Visit www.culturequake.org to learn more about the book Culturequake and the blog. ©2009 Chuck Burr LLC

Notes:

Business Week
French Take to the Streets

In These Times
Orange Fades to Black: Heralded for its Orange Revolution five years ago, Ukraine is coming apart at the seams

Financial Post
Europe scrambles as Iceland’s banks fail

The Observer
G20 warned unrest will sweep globe

The Washington Post
Stocks Up After Seesaw Session

Donella Meadows
Limits To Growth: The 30-Year Update, p. 222

CIA
The World Factbook: United States

Bloomberg
Obama Says His Budget Would Put Economy on ‘Firm Foundation’

Reuters
U.N. panel says world should ditch dollar

Michael Ruppert
Interregnum: Reflections on an Obama Landslide and the Path Ahead

International Energy Agency
World Energy Outlook 2008

Jerry Mander
In The Absence Of The Sacred, p. 79

Diversity is the Key

The new generation of small farms will be more diverse than the previous generation. During the era of cheap fuel and other inputs, large-scale farms were profitable. However input prices are rising and commodity or crop prices are falling. Corn and soybean prices per bushel have fallen 30 to 40 percent in the last year respectively. Milk prices have plummeted 35 percent in the last two months. Right now the price of milk barely covers the cost of feed alone.

Diversity in niches not competing with big agribusiness is the key to success. Here are a couple examples of this new model. The Seven Seeds Farm in Williams, OR grows certified organic vegetables, fruits, berries, seeds, sheep for wool and lamb, and poultry, offers Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) shares, and the owner, Don Tipping is one of the leading educators in the region.

Mark Shepard at Forest Agriculture Enterprises in Viola, WI is an edible woody crops nursery and educational/speaking business. New Forest Farms is Mark’s farm and actual Earth-site that grows Certified Organic produce, chestnuts, hazelnuts, apples, pine nuts, walnuts, kiwi’s, grass-fed beef, hazelnut finished hogs, and more… Note the diversity and long shelf life items such as organically grown nuts and seeds.

Mark says, “With no web presence, our life has been paced a lot more on ‘Earth Time,’ not culture’s computer time… ‘Earth Time’ is a phenomena of which most people have no clue… It is DEEP and RICH and AWESOME! I’m going outside now to wander in the food forest, prune some branches, listen to the birds and smell the earth as it emerges from the snow…”

The Central Rocky Mountain Permaculture Institute located at 7,200 feet above sea level in Basalt, CO offers a variety of permaculture design courses, edible landscape design consulting and nursery stock, plus organic herbs to local grocers. I took my permaculture design course (PDC) there in 2004. I highly recommend that anyone interested in learning some farming skills to take their PDC. Read Permaculture Activist magazine to find a PDC in your area.

Permaculture will teach you how to build soil and diversity using indigenous cultural practices. Perennial polycultures including fruits, nuts, and berries are combined with beneficial plants such as nitrogen fixers or nectaries using the forest as a model. You learn how to create a low maintenance edible landscape around your home.

The local food scene is changing. Produce buyers are making an effort to buy local, CSAs like the Village Farm in Ashland, OR are using new models that lower annual member dues through work exchange, and at farmer’s markets you are starting to see more diverse products such as mushroom spawn and even worm culture.

Start out Renting

Land prices have come down significantly. Residential real estate prices are down between 20 and even 30 percent form their high in 2006. Last year was the first time since 1988 that farm values have dropped.

I still believe that real estate prices have another 20+ percent to drop until much of the land speculation inflation has been eliminated. Land values in suburban areas are still greater than their agricultural economic value. Today, you still cannot make enough money farming to pay the mortgage on suburban land, and as land values drop so does the purchasing power of the dollar. The point is that land is still expensive, so small diverse farms “stacking functions” have the best chance for success.

My good friend Reg Vinkemier who has been a Minnesota farmer for 55 years suggests to, “Rent land and buy used equipment to get some kind of cash flow and to look at more second hand equipment.” Don Tipping offered, “My best suggestion would be that if you had farming skills befriending an older family who owns land, but is unable to care for it—sort of a lease option to buy arrangement. So that you can get farming now without having to own.”

If you use the CSA model, you may have more leverage to buy land as a coop than as an individual farmer. The most famous example of buying land as a CSA was farmer John Peterson. The movie about his life The Real Dirt on Farmer John will turn every idea you ever had about what it means to be an American farmer, or an American dreamer, on its head.

Local Food Movement

As peak oil arrives, for most local communities it will be necessary to restart local small farms. Rural communities such as Ashland, OR are starting to hold their first Food Security Conferences. It’s goal, said organizer Lisa Pavati, editor of the Wellness Guide, “is to stimulate action among individuals and groups to dedicate more land, water, seeds and workers toward growing food locally.”

Cuba has already experienced petrocollapse when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1990. Today more than 50 percent of the vegetable needs of Havana’s 2.2 million people is supplied by local urban agriculture. In smaller cities and towns the rate is between 80 to 100 percent. Farmers are now among the highest paid workers.

A new book called A Nation of Farmers: Defeating the Food Crisis on American Soil, is nothing short of a call to arms for local food proponents. Co-author Aaron Newton and New York writer Sharon Astyk call for a grassroots-led agricultural revolution that would result in 100 million people becoming farmers and millions more becoming home cooks.

It is important that this be a local grass roots movement, but it needs to be more. Local and state governments need to shift their emphasis away from the now defunct model of endless suburban sprawl and large agribusiness. Pouring more stimulus money down the drain after the single largest waste of resources in the history of the planet, as James Howard Kunstler has termed suburbia, is foolish.

President Obama would probably make significant progress in his effort to reverse the recession, by creating millions of new jobs right at home on small farms. The hundreds of millions of dollars spent by the USDA every year benefitting agribusiness should be redirected to family farms and CSAs. State university agricultural and extension agencies need to shift their mind-set away from large to small farm economics. Oregon’s small farms extension services could be used as a model. Extension agency offices should also have staff dedicated to permaculture.

Urban Agriculture and Usufruct

Farm extension offices should be opened in cities to promote urban agriculture, and local zoning and land use codes modified to encourage urban farming. Organizations like the Detroit’s Garden Resource Program Collaborative need more funding. Detroit could become the Midwestern Havana.

As long a private property rights trump, community interest, they will get in the way of community benefit. If anyone wants to farm, they should be given tools, seeds, and a plot of land with water in usufruct. Vacant lots should revert to the community. The highest and best use for vacant urban land should be to give healthy food and secure jobs to those who most need it.

Unemployment Highest and Lowest in Farm Country

An interesting revelation coming out of the recession is that unemployment is lowest in the Midwestern farm belt but highest in the California central valley. Every state in the country, with the exception of a band stretching from the Dakotas down to Texas, is now shedding jobs at a rapid pace. The highest rate in the country is in El Centro, CA due east of San Diego in the desert of California’s Inland Valley, experiencing a depression like 22.6 percent unemployment.

I am trying to draw a conclusion from these interesting statistics. The California central valley has been hit especially hard by the drought. For the first time in 15 years, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation officials said parched reservoirs and patchy rainfall this year were forcing them to completely stop surface water deliveries for at least a three-week period beginning March 1.

The drought will cause an estimated $1.15 billion dollar loss in agriculture-related wages and eliminate as many as 40,000 jobs in farm-related industries in the San Joaquin Valley alone this year, where most of the nation’s produce and nut crops are grown.

The conclusion to draw is that we must start growing more of our food locally whether for peak oil or for global warming caused drought. We are seeing the end of 3,000-mile fast food.

Don’t Forget About Overpopulation

Whenever I talk about food, I have to remind people that humanity has been running a food race ever since the start of the agricultural revolution 10,000 years ago. When ever we produce more food, we are producing more people. Which brings me to the reminder that no matter what your cause, it is a lost cause unless population is reduced.

The first pillar to local food security is fewer people, then protect your agricultural land and grow your food locally. I have written extensively here and in Culturequake: The Fall of Modern Culture and the Rise of Earth Culture about overpopulation, so I will not belabor the point, but is bears remembering. Our culture has to reverse overshoot if we are ever going to have real local food security.

This ties into my previous essay about the Free Nature Movement to start giving back what we have taken from the other species by reducing our population and consumption. We won’t have to turn rainforest into soybean and grazing fields if the demand is not there. Give a fair part of the midwest back to the buffalo.

Inspiring New Farmers

I want to inspire new farmers. Even those who have never even been on a farm before or never gardened. Start thinking about it. Go to your local farmer’s market and talk to the growers. Visit their farms; ask questions. Volunteer for a work party. Tell your kids they can keep what they get for selling food to the neighbors. If you feel inclined, get involved in local politics to make some of the changes you want to see happen.

Watch the new Permaculture for Beginners DVD when it becomes available later this year. In the meantime, read Gaia’s Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture by Toby Hemenway. Plant a fruit or nut tree and some berries in your backyard. Read seed catalogs.

You would be surprised how many people are starting to think about growing some of their own food this spring. It can be as easy as planting green side up. Good growing—here comes the sun.

Visit www.culturequake.org to learn more about the book Culturequakeand the online blog. ©2009 Chuck Burr LLC

Notes:

MISH’S Global Economic Trend Analysis
Dairy Farm Crisis; Milk Prices Turn Sour

Seven Seeds Farm
Seven Seeds farm story

The Central Rocky Mountain Permaculture Institute
The 23rd Annual Permaculture Design Course

Permaculture Activist
Events and Calendar

The Big Picture
Residential Real Estate Price Freefall

Angelic Organics
The Real Dirt of Farmer John

Ashland Daily Tidings
Food security at issue

Energy Bulletin
100 million new farmers? North Carolina writer calls for agricultural revolution

Community Solutions
The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil

Garden Resource Program Collaborative
Welcome to Detroit!

New York Times
Job Losses Show Breadth of Recession

The Huffington Post
Drought To Cut Off Federal Water To California Farms

The Permaculture Research Institute of Australia
Permaculture for Beginners DVD Coming soon…

Why the environmental movement has failed to protect the environment. Introducing the “Free Nature Movement” and why like abolition and suffrage it can succeed in freeing nature from humanity.

Environmentalism is not a movement. For a political campaign to be considered a movement, it has to drive a new right into the constitution. Recycling and carpooling is not amending the constitution. The environmental movement cannot, as it is currently structured, protect the other species from our burgeoning population.

Nothing is effectively achieved until the constitution is amended. A 28th amendment that gives all other species equal rights to humanity would enable legislation to begin to reverse the 233 years of exploitation that the U.S. is founded upon.

This is not as far fetched as it sounds. In 2002 the lower house of parliament in Germany, the Bundestag, adopted a bill that for the first time enshrined animal rights in the constitution. The bill, passed by a huge majority. The bill added, “The state takes responsibility for protecting the natural foundations of life and animals in the interest of future generations.” This makes Germany the first country that as far as I know to give constitutional rights to animals. This is as good a place as any to say where the Free Nature Movement began.

On a local level, your town council or county commissioners can adopt the “The Rights of Nature Ordinance.” First passed in 2006 by the Tamaqua Borough Council in Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, the ordinance states that, “People and their communities are trustees of nature, and communities of nature and ecosystems form part of the natural trust.”

What is a “right”

A right is more than the right to vote. A true right is to allow all other species to follow their own destiny as given by the universe and by god.

Today we have enslaved nature to do our bidding. The Bible refers to man’s dominion, “over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.”

As many know, this enslavement actually began with agricultural revolution 10,000 years ago when one tribe started living a new story that, “the world belongs to man.” This was the birth of our modern taker culture. One tribe in the fertile crescent between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers cast away the story that enabled humanity to live in symbiosis with the earth’s ecosystem for three million years that, “humanity belongs to the earth.”

Equal rights also includes equal consideration and representation. Most indigenous tribes have rituals to testify that the human family is one strand in the larger web of life, to acknowledge all our relations. For instance, the Hopi of the Southwest United States have celebrated a Council of All Beings ritual with masks representing plants and animals for thousands of years.

“Freedom” is a lie

Freedom is probably the greatest lie created by the agricultural revolution and is the foundation of our modern culture. Since we are born our culture tells us that we want to be free from want; it’s a double negative. And the way to obtain freedom is to work hard to be able to buy or consume the things that will make us free including food, shelter, and clothing. Our culture’s idea of freedom is a lifetime of enslavement to pay for mortgage for a roof over our heads.

True freedom, like a true right, is the ability to follow your own destiny. Being locked in a consumer culture making things to get things is not freedom.

The concept of freedom has also been used as an excuse to perpetuate our culture in the form of continued exploitation of man and beast. Because those at the top “are free” they can do as they please. The wealthy are free to consume in a global economy where a minority exploits the majority.

We also use freedom to justify our unlimited procreation. As far back as the Old Testament, Adam chooses Eve. Eve literally translates to “life.” Adam has chosen to forgo the limits of nature, to take more than humanity’s fair share from all other species, and to produce a surplus of food to grow a larger population. We can do this because, “we are free—humanity is free of limits.”

Earth Culture will enable the Free Nature Movement

When enough people figure out that modern culture cannot take care of them or their decedents, a tipping point to the creation of new cultures will have arrived. Today new earth culture(s) are beginning to grow out of our decaying modern taker culture. Our current financial crisis probably will begin this awakening or remembering.

We are beginning to remember what it took for an average person to make a living in harmony with the web of life. It boils down to giving support to get support instead of making things to get things.

Once we can turn that corner and make that mental shift that we are just one strand of the web of life and that we need the entire web for not only our sake, but for the sake of our relations, then we will let go of our false freedom. For instance, we will also be at the point we are able to let go of private property and growth without limits. When this shift in values happens, we will give our selves the alternatives we need to live new lifestyles.

By letting go of our “freedom” to do as we will, we “free” nature from her bondage and exploitation.

Transition to a new culture

So how are we going to get there? A big part of the answer to that question is in this graphic of Saudi oil depletion. We are good through 2010, then it is down to nothing in a relatively short period of time. Just look at the chart.

Think about this, world population in 1850 before the use of oil was about 1 billion, and that was before we entered overshoot and significantly drew down natural resources. In 1850 we had nearly an intact new continent and ecosystem, today we have peak everything and a biodiversity crash with 6.8 billion. This means there are about 5.8 billion people here, in my opinion, mostly because of oil. An eight-wheel farm tractor with a GPS does no good without diesel; your back to the draft horse. And don’t tell me you are going to mine, mill, smelt, and fabricate a steel tractor with a solar collector.

Many say we have a century left of coal, but that may not be the case either. For instance, according to a recent USGS study, the coal reserve estimate for the Gillette coal field is 10.1 billion short tons, which is a mere 5% of the original 200 billion ton resource total. In other words, the USGS has just revised the Gillette resource base down by 95%. The Gillette coal field in Wyoming has been the most prolific coal field in the U.S. This region has been nicknamed the “Fort Knox of coal.” In 2006, output from the Gillette region totaled over 431 million short tons of coal, or over 37% of U.S. total yearly production.

The transition to the steady-state we are heading for will take in my estimation, another 100 years to finally plateau. How rough it will be remains to be seen. But, judging by how hard the dominant paradigm is hanging on, it will be rough. My biggest question is how much biodiversity, the ecosystem’s resilience, will be left by 2100?

What will the new lifestyle look like?

You have to accept that we are not going to be here to see it. We will see the transition from the age of exuberance to the age of powering down; that is happening now. The age of powering down will be one of learning lost skills, building community, figuring out how to do with less, and leaving behind much of the stuff we can’t use any more. If you take the seats out, your SUV may make a nice playhouse for the grandkids.

In this phase, humanity may begin to loosen its grip over nature. The diminishing human population will start to leave more room for the other species. Our mindset will have not changed yet, the world will “still belong to man,” but nature will get some breathing room. I just hope there is enough of her left to regenerate. Humanity is pushing every species except cows to the edge of extinction.

If enough of nature is left after 2100 years, that is when the restoration time begins. Hopefully what is left of modern culture will be so shell shocked in 100 years by what they have lost that our descendants will just walk away from that failed lifestyle and live closer to the earth. They will have to.

It is easy to describe a future supped-up 1850’s lifestyle maybe with radios, but it is the ethics and story that we live by that will make all the difference. For the last 110 years our ethics have been blinded by an addiction to a cheap energy surplus that created all this stuff, technology, and the middle class. Without cheap energy, it will all go away. Lets hope there are people starting to think about building knowledge arks now.

The point is that it is the story we live by that can free nature. If we can remember the original story that worked for humanity for three million years, that “humanity belongs to the earth,” then we will be able to let go of our selves, our grasping, and our freedom in order to free nature.

In the end, I believe that the Free Nature Movement will just happen because the dominant culture will just go away. There will be very little modern taker culture left to have to convince to allow nature to follow her destiny. It will just happen.

Read Culturequake: The End of Modern Culture and the Rise of Earth Culture.

Visit www.culturequake.org to learn more about Culturequake the book and the online magazine. ©2009 Chuck Burr LLC

Notes:

BBC News
Germany to grant animal rights

CELDF
Rights of Nature Ordinance

EarthLight
The Ecological Self

Culture Change
Counter argument for “Stimulus,” growth and employment

The Honoring All Life Foundation
Exploring Choices Honoring the Essence of All

Culturequake
Usufruct: End Private Property to Solve the Financial Crisis and Create Food Security

The Oil Drum
Saudi Arabia’s Crude Oil Production Peaked in 2005

Energy Bulletin
How much coal is out there?

Wikipedia
World population

The Derivatives Powder Keg

Derivatives are financial instruments whose values are derived from something else such as assets or indexes such as interest rates or the stock market. They are used to mitigate or hedge the risk of economic loss from the changes in the value of the underlining asset or index. Derivatives can also be used to acquire risk rather than insure against it to speculate, betting that the party seeking insurance will be wrong about the future value. The derivative market is largely unregulated with no loss reserve requirement thanks to Clinton’s 2000 Commodities Future Modernization Act.

Total world derivatives are $1000 trillion or 19 times the total world GDP of $54 billion. Over-the-counter derivatives total $684 trillion of which 67 percent are interest rate swaps. Exchange-traded derivatives total $344 trillion. Interest rate swaps are the largest derivative powder keg waiting to blow the world financial markets to supernova.

Interest rates swaps are maintained by the spread between the Fed funds and prime mortgage rates. At the end of 2008 Fed funds were at 5.25 percent while mortgage rates were six percent, yielding a spread of less than one percent.

To increase the spread to avoid interest rate swaps from imploding, Wall Street bankers took advantage of the U.S. people’s ignorance of economics. People look at prices to gage inflation, when it is really the money supply that controls inflation. Prices are the symptom, not the cause. They ran up commodities for a time and then brought about a dramatic drop in prices later to give the perception that deflation might be setting in. This is how they justified the near-zero interest rates we see now, which can yield a huge spread of about five percent, which is more than five times what was available before all the trouble started.

Already we have seen the subprime derivatives, large insurers, and investment banks implode. Wall Street CEO’s lied through their teeth about the condition of their insolvent companies right up to the day they went bankrupt. The losses are going directly to the people through the bailouts.

But the $700 billion bailout to absorb banking toxic waste plus the new $787 stimulus package will ignite hyperinflation and bring double-digit interest rates. Because of the world economic downturn, foreign nations have fewer dollars to buy U.S. Treasuries with. Tax revenues are plummeting world wide as earnings collapse.

Bailouts Are Lighting the Fuse

The Fed and the Treasury are using debt instruments that are being monetized. In other words, creating money out of thin air (U.S. Monetary Base chart). This is immediately very inflationary, and is how the fuse to interest rates swaps is being lit.

Take JP Morgan Chase for example, and their $90 trillion derivative portfolio. Let’s say that $50 trillion are in interest rate swaps. If they have even a mere two percent overhang (loss) where they have to pay out variable rates of interest on two percent more of their total interest rate swaps than the portion of swaps on which they are, by contrast, receiving variable rates of interest, they could suffer horrendous losses that could easily put them under.

Let’s say that everything balances at a four percent spread as described earlier. But now rates move to 14 percent because of hyperinflation and everyone ignores the rates set by the central banks sending LIBOR and Treasury bill rates to unheard of high levels.

Two percent of $50 trillion is a trillion dollars of overhang loss on which you are now paying out 10 percent more, and 10 percent of one trillion is $100 billion, a killer loss. That would put them under. Even an overhang of only one half of one percent pumps out a loss of $25 billion. And what if the overhang is five percent, or 10 percent, or 20 percent? With an overhang of 20 percent, we hit one trillion in losses. And this is only one bank!

Our capitalist global casino is a house of cards. If the economy continues to sink, credit default swaps will be the first to blow as we move from hundreds of billions to trillions in corporate quarterly losses. This triggers more deficit spending, which ignites more inflation which lights the fuse to the interest rate swaps supernova.

The Pension Bomb

Greater financial risk plus plummeting earnings per share pushes stock markets lower, which increases pension deficits and defaults (S&P 500 Corporate Earnings chart). As mentioned in my previous essay, America’s 500 largest companies have a deficit of $200 billion in their pension plans. If the Dow hits 4,000, pension deficits would rise to $400 to $500 billion. Retirees lose their pensions and stock market investments. Many will be left with just their FDIC insured deposits if the government does not default.

Standard and Poor’s estimates that by Q3 2009 S&P 500 earnings will have collapsed by 83 percent from their high in Q2 2007. This will push the Dow to between 5000 and 4000 over the next year. Japan’s GDP, formerly a major buyer of U.S. securities, shrank at an annual rate of 12.7 percent from October to December 2008 after contracting for two previous quarters. The UN International Labor Organization estimates that 50 million workers will lose their jobs worldwide in 2009. About 20,000 major banks worldwide collapsed, were sold, or were nationalized in 2008. An estimated 62,000 U.S. companies are expected to shut down this year.

The triple whammy is that during the great depression about half the Americans lived on farms, but today only two percent participate in their food production.

The big picture for me, is that I do not see another Internet boom on the horizon to pull the world economy out of further decline. The Obama stimulus bump will last six to 12 months, but then ware off. Even if we avoid further financial meltdown, starting in the next two to four years peak oil is going to start building relentless downward pressure on the world economy.

The best solution is to start powering down to a steady-state economy, and build community gracefully now while we have the resources. Today you can plant your first backyard garden and still go to the grocery store if it does not work out.

Visit www.culturequake.org to learn more about Culturequake the book and the online magazine. ©2009 Chuck Burr LLC

Notes:

Derivatives
www.wikipedia.org

The Big Picture
S&P500 Q4 Earnings Collapse

The New York Times
Japan’s Economy Plunges at Fastest Pace Since ’74

The Big Picture
S&P500 Q4 Earnings Collapse

AlterNet
U.S. Intel Chief’s Shocking Warning: Wall Street’s Disaster Has Spawned Our Greatest Terrorist Threat

Bob Chapman’s The International Forecaster
The Quadrillion Dollar Powder Keg Waiting To Blow
Toxic Waste Threatens To Poison The Nation State
Deficits For The Shrinking World Economy
Acts Of Insanity Are What Destroyed The Economy

GlobalEurope Anticipation Bulletin
4th quarter 2009 – Beginning of Phase 5 of the global systemic crisis: phase of global geopolitical dislocation

Insolvency Crisis

The world economy is essentially broke. U.S. daily bankruptcy filings have risen from about 1,300 in January 2006 to about 5,000 in September 2008.

Here is how big the problem really is. First, the value of all the money in the world until recently was three times greater than the value of all physical goods and services. In other words, our “money” is actually worth 30 cents on the dollar. And considering, physical assets such as real estate have been over valued, your pixel money is actually “worth-less.”

Second, the U.S. government’s $9.7 trillion commitment to solving the financial crisis amounts to almost two-thirds of the value of everything produced in the U.S. last year. The promises are composed of about $1 trillion in stimulus packages, around $3 trillion in lending and spending and $5.7 trillion in agreements to provide aid to failing institutions.

Third, until recently our growing economy has been able to cover our debts and deficits, but now the blue-light-special lifestyle is over. Everyone, from the public to governments is now under water. America has built up a staggering amount of debt. At the time of the 1929 stock market crash, total U.S. debt was 176 percent of GDP. Before the current financial crisis began, total debt stood at a whopping 304 percent of GDP. Today it is far worse; we are well beyond our means.

The next bubble to burst will be pensions. America’s 500 largest companies have a deficit of $200 billion in their pension plans. If the Dow hits 4,000, the deficit would rise to $400 to $500 billion. Companies will stop contributing and reduce payouts when forced to make a choice between payroll, corporate jets, and pension contributions.

Bailout Liquidity Makes Situation Worse

If the world financial crisis is really one of global insolvency, adding liquidity in the form of more government debt is actually dangerous. If I have a successful business and I borrow money for a temporary cash flow problem, no problem. But, if I am actually insolvent, increasing my debt by borrowing more money makes the situation worse for both me and the lender who will lose their investment in my soon to be bankrupt business.

Because of their size, the bailouts may ignite hyperinflation from all of the liquidity that is being generated out of thin air. Since the financial crisis began last year, the money supply has been nearly doubled out of thin air. Hyperinflation may cause the $50 trillion derivative markets to explode. The credit default swaps would be the first to blow driving interest rates to double digits which would light the fuse to the $50 trillion interest rate swaps supernova.

Wasted Opportunity

Since World War II, we have produced little of value, but built a huge pile of debt upon debt. Europeans invaded what was an entire unspoiled continent 517 yeas ago, and today we have little of real value to show for it except a lot of people and a trashed ecosystem. What was once a vast expanse of fertility and old growth biodiversity from sea to shining sea is now an input-dependent monoculture wasteland. Take a ride on an plane while you still can and look down. Almost everything coming out of big-box stores is soon destined for the dumpster and our spread out suburban infrastructure will prove to be a liability as peak oil eliminates happy motoring.

Bernard Madoff’’s $50 billion ponzi scheme revealed how our Taker economic system really works. The problem is bigger than just our institutions such as fractional reserve banking, the Federal Reserve, and the looming derivative bubble. Our entire Taker culture is based on little of value. Growth, debt, greed, concentration of wealth , something for nothing, depleted resources, and overpopulation are not assets—they are liabilities. If we are to ultimately thrive, we must contribute to biodiversity, not destroy it.

Long History

We have actually had this “value-less” system that Daniel Quinn calls our Taker culture for 10,000 years since the agricultural revolution. Ever since it became OK to lock up the food, privatize land, concentrate wealth, make war, and for a minority to control the majority we have been impoverished. As long as we had abundant enough natural resources and a low enough population, the Taker ponzi scheme worked. We kept consuming the world to keep everybody happy. But, now we have overshot the earth’s carrying capacity.

Steady-State Economy

When all of the cards are done falling, local powered-down steady-state economies will be the only replacement for our infinite growth global consumer economy. To live within our means for perpetuity means living within the earth’s carrying capacity which we have vastly reduced especially over the last 100 years.

Economic growth is a threat because it assumes a growth in population, production, and consumption within our finite planet. A steady-sate economy has a constant stock of capital that is maintained by a rate of output no higher than the environment can absorb. Even banks can lend only as much money as they have.

In a steady-state economy, society focuses on more noble goals than economic growth. The late Masanobu Fukuoka asked “Why do you have to develop? If economic growth rises from 5 percent to 10 percent, is happiness going to double? What’s wrong with a growth rate of 0 percent? Isn’t this a rather stable kind of economics? Could there be anything better than living simply and taking it easy?”

Our economic measurement systems are a shell game. Bhutan’s Gross National Happiness is a better indicator than our Gross Domestic Product (GDP). GDP counts goods and services, but ignores the important things such a clean water, fresh air, public health, and biodiversity. GPD also lumps everyone together. If executive pay goes from 100 times average wages to 1,000 times, while real middle classes wages are falling, GDP does not show that. Concentration of wealth, externalized costs, depleted resources are invisible.

A sustainable economy requires a stable population, lower per capita consumption, and reduced complexity. In fact, since human population has overshot the earth’s carrying capacity by over 20 percent, our population and the economy are going to have to be significantly reduced size before true stability can occur. See Chapters 3 and 4 of Culturequake for an in-depth discussion of our population explosion and overshoot.

Also, since human population is in overshoot, taking more resources than the earth can generate, future carrying capacity will continue to be eroded. Imagine how great a population North America could have supported with all of our old-growth forests, topsoil, watersheds, and biodiversity intact? Now, half our topsoil is gone, much of what’s left is dead mineral matter only able to supporting crops through fossil fuel fertilizers, watersheds and fisheries are collapsing, the Ogallala aquifer supplying farmers from the Dakotas to Texas will be depleted in forty years, and global warming is ending stable weather. I’ll stop there.

Invest Locally

President Obama’s Herculean effort to revive the consumer economy is about as useful as a bucket-brigade on the Titanic. I have great respect for president Obama’s commitment and abilities, but he still clings to the illusion that “growth” is still possible with dwindling resources and a burgeoning population.

Other than feeding unemployed people and keeping them in their homes, the rest of the money would be better spent rebuilding our big-box bombed-out local communities, our railroads, and start Cuban-style urban agriculture and land reformation. Urban agriculture feeds half the people in Havana and 80 to 100 percent of people in smaller cities. Bank deposits should be insured and insolvent banks allowed to fail.

This will probably be last time we will be able to muster this level of resources; the last time people will lend us this much money. Our resource base is a shadow of what it was 100 years ago and our population has grown six times. I am saddened to see what is ultimately my children’s tax dollars squandered trying to revive the rusting, sinking hulk of our industrial economy.

Because our elected leaders and the media do not realize that we are entering the twilight of modern culture, they have not leveled with the people. Thus the people are not ready for the kind of cultural change we are going to see over the next century. It takes a crisis like this to be the wake-up call.

Economic Decline Can Be a Good Thing

Earnest Callenbach wrote in Ecotopia that a financial panic can be turned into an advantage if in the end society can be focus its energy, knowledge, and skills to what is really important in life. With the ensuing flight of capital, the factories, farms, and other productive facilities would fall into the people’s hands like ripe plums. Whole markets should be reorganized, no one or no corporation should be able to own more than say 40 acres. In fact, corporations should only exist for public projects such as roads or utility infrastructure and be de-chartered when the project is completed.

Our economy will be reshaped by many influences including re-localization, new-urbanism, peak oil, and learning lost horticulture and craft skills. Powering-down will happen discontinuously. We will rest at a plateau for a while and then drop to the next lower energy and complexity level. Governing institutions would be more useful if realigned along bioregion and watersheds lines—not in a continent-sized country made up of arbitrary squares.

Where to Begin?

Start where you are now, develop your sense of place, and live your truth.. Act from a sense of passion and joy. Plug into your local community; offer your skills and resources to sustainability efforts. Use your creative imagination. Ask yourself, “how can I partially or completely unplug from the wage economy in the next three years?” By doing so you will meet like-minded people. If people see you as sharing what you have, they will share with you.

Turn off your TV and tune into your family, friends, and neighbors. Educate yourself about useful skills such as permaculture. You are better off living near a community on a good piece of land that you own in a yurt than you are buying a house with a mortgage that the bank owns.

Seek a new vision and a new lifestyle. Instead of recycling, how can my waste become another’s food? Instead of debt, how can I simplify? Instead of mining topsoil how can I build it?

Humans are meant to take their modest place in a seamless web of life, disturbing that web as little as possible. This means sacrificing present complexity and consumption, but it ensures future survival. People should be happy not to the extent that they exploit their fellow man and creatures, but to the extent they live in balance with them.

Starting this spring, Culturequake essays will begin to describe our own personal journey to re-localize on our small permaculture farm in Ashland, OR. We will share our experiences with soil food web building, food forest design, installation, harvest, appropriate technology, and community education.

Notes:

James Bruges, Resurgence
Enduring Economies

Mark Pittman and Bob Ivry , Bloomberg.com
U.S. Taxpayers Risk $9.7 Trillion on Bailout Programs

Bob Chapman
Acts Of Insanity Are What Destroyed The Economy

Larry Korn, permaculture.org
Masanobu Fukuoka’s Natural Farming and Permaculture

Earnest Callenbach
Ecotopia

Richard Heinberg
Powerdown: Options and Actions for a Post-Carbon World

Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy
www.steadystate.org

Institute of Ecolonomics
www.instituteofecolonomics.org

David Holmgren
Holmgren Design Services

Visit Culturequake.org to learn more about Culturequake the book and the online magazine. ©2009 Chuck Burr LLC

We know that the needs of the natural world are more important than the economic system, but privatization sees it the other way around. Privatization of land implies the right of the “owner” to use the land in anyway they see fit including despoiling the land to “make a profit” at the expense of the local community and all other species. Native communities know this and do not voluntarily give up the resources on which their communities depend until their communities have been destroyed.

Privatization has led to land use “for profit” and not “for community.” Our suburban system is at the heart of our economic problems and is the single greatest waste of resources in the history of the world, and we are stuck with this infrastructure. Autos are only two percent efficient and transportation is almost two-thirds of total U.S. oil use. Private land development has led to a living arrangement that has no future.

Usufruct

Usufruct is a Roman term for the legal right to enjoying the replenishable fruits or profits from property owned by another. This includes the ability sell or let the enjoyment of the usufruct. But what if the owner was your local community? This would end private property.

In tribal communities usufruct means the land is owned in common by the tribe or community, but families and individuals have the right to use plots of land. Most native tribes owned land as a tribal group and not as individuals. The family never owned the land; they just farmed it. In a usufruct system, absentee ownership is not permitted. Modern usufruct examples include Cuba’s successful agricultural system, the traditional Mexico ejido system, and the right of native Canadian people to hunt and fish on Crown lands.

Cuba

Cuba has already experienced peak oil when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1990. How can a community survive and eventually thrive after a loss of 80 percent of its oil and fertilizer inputs? The answer is community interaction, urban organic agriculture, and usufruct land rights to small farmers.

Today more than 50 percent of the vegetable needs of Havana’s 2.2 million people is supplied by local urban agriculture. There are over 1,000 kiosks in Havana selling locally grown food. In smaller cities and towns the rate is between 80 to 100 percent. Farmers are now among the highest paid workers.

When the “special period” began in the early 90s, every vacant lot in the city was turned into a farm or a orchard. People cleaned up the land and started growing food. They just did it by trial and error. In 1993 the first Australian permaculturists came to Cuba to start the first train-the-trainer course. Today over 400 permaculture instructors have been trained in Cuba.

To increase food production the government worked with local farmers. The result was smaller farms and coops with a high degree of privatization and autonomy. Forty percent of large state farms were divided into privately owned cooperatives. Decision-making was localized with fewer regulations.

Tens of thousands of acres of land were leased rent and tax-free to small farmers. The only two requirements are that you grow food on the land and the land is delivered in usufruct. If however you stop growing food or another community need develops, you have to give the land back to the government. As a result, thousands of families moved to rural land with land rights guaranteed as long as you farmed.

Credit and service coops were expanded to allow small farmers to buy seed and rent equipment collectively, but also to allow the farmers to keep their land independently. This gives the benefits centralizing and yet being decentralized at the same time.

Some in the U.S. would dispute Cuban success. They say, “If we do not have 1,000 acre farms in Nebraska and Iowa run by eight wheel 375 horse tractors, we’ll all starve.” Give me a break. First, any permaculturist can tell you that a locally maintained polyculture out yields a monoculture by far. An individual crop within a polyculture will yield less, but when you stack multiple crops in the same space, polycultures out yield monocultures every day of the week. Second, breaking large absentee-owned farms into smaller family-sized plots creates jobs and builds local communities.

Community Land Trust

There is a way to start eating the private property monster from the inside out today—a land trust. Create a virtual patchwork community with you and your friends by contributing all or part of your land to a land trust for the benefit of the community and give yourself usufruct rights. The system won’t work though if they don’t have the right and the capability to limit or stop newcomers from using it; overpopulation must be reversed. People are also more likely to stay in community long-term if you can offer a way to transfer usufruct to their children.

You can also get real estate tax-free non-profit status to lands open to the public for community service such as a church, an auditorium, or a conference center. You still have to pay real estate taxes on housing, gardens, and other properties not open to the public. Living on the property at the convenience of the employer enables a community to provide housing as compensation without paying employment taxes on the housing. Capitalize the savings on community infrastructure. Why should every household have a separate well, laundry, parking, and trash facility? Consult your local tax accountant for more information.

End the Financial Crisis Overnight

You could solve the financial crisis overnight if we forgave mortgages and rent. You would have to pay your association dues and utilities of course. This would also eliminate the advantage of the “lucky spermer club.” Why should one inherent a free house while another struggles to pay rent for their entire lives just because of the advantage of birth?

Landlords would not be happy, but they could have a free apartment and wealth concentration needs to end anyway. A lot of large banks would go away; but deposits are insured, and the banks created the money for the mortgages out of thin air anyway, so what is the difference? The whole factional reserve banking system should go away, but that is an essay for another time. I would also add no more new construction in agricultural or open space. This would hopefully in-cent people to limit family sizes and overall population.

Seventh-Generation Zoning Manipulated Solution

Living in a resort community, Telluride, CO, has taught me a lot about land use manipulation. It is too easy for private interests to manipulate government for their benefit through elections, committee assignments, lawyers, etc. What is zoned agricultural today can be a subdivision tomorrow regardless of what the master plan says by the vote of a handful of “public” officials. I would offer that land use zoning should only be modifiable after a popular vote of the seventh generation in a row has approved such a change in the community’s and all species best interest. This raises the issue of reversing population growth as well. Otherwise a growing human population will want to develop more open and agricultural space. Holding all land in community usufruct also eliminates land speculation windfall profiteering.

Support Your Local Secession Movement

One way to speed up land reform may be to break up large nation states. I have advocated for some time now redrawing maps by watersheds and bioregions instead of squares or just one side of a river. The State of Jefferson and the Vermont Republic are two U.S. secessionist movements. Whether it is to fight corporate tyranny or recognize a unique geographical region, secession movements are growing as our modern culture collapses. One other point I frequently make is that hierarchies have great defenses to attacks from below, but they have none from abandonment.

The Point

What is private property? Nothing actually. Private property is simply a social organization in which enough people agree to enforce the system of protection of land “owner” rights. The land knows nothing of ownership. Nature will sweep away our generation and its clinging to possessions like so many leaves blowing in the wind.

It is just cultural, artificial, and temporary. Private property is a house of cards. If enough people don’t go along with the system, the whole house of cards falls down. The glue that holds privatization together is fear. Locking up the food and property causes fear. “If you don’t follow our system and get a job, you don’t eat and you don’t get a home.” The bottom line, is to start building self-reliant communities so you are not dependent on modern cultural systems. Our culture has no defense against abandonment—learn how to walk away.

Visit www.culturequake.org to learn more about Culturequake the book and the online magazine. ©2009 Chuck Burr LLC

Notes:

Paul Hawken
Wild Earth, Fall, 2002

Energy Information Administration
Demand

Community Solutions
The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil

Equity Trust, Inc.
www.equitytrust.org

Evergreen Land Trust
www.evergreenlandtrust.org

Institute for Community Economics
www.iceclt.org

National Community Land Trust Network
www.cltnetwork.org

Oregon Sustainable Agriculture Land Trust
www.osalt.org

Chuck Burr
Watershed vs. Bioregion: Get to Know Yours

Earth Rights Institute
Course on land Rights and Land Value Capture

The State of Jefferson
www.jeffersonstate.com

Second Vermont Republic
www.vermontrepublic.org

Vermont Commons
www.vtcommons.org

Josef Graf
The End of Real Estate