Convict

REAL Green is like being a convicted criminal that has done his time and now is at the gate looking out at the scary world of normality.  In the REAL Green it is seeing the world of our ancestors as the normal world and the modern world is the prison that is being left.  This is even more convoluted because this prison is the mental ward for the insane.  REAL Green is an embrace of maladaptation to adapt.  You will live a life that is not normal and, in some ways, you will be considered a nutter.  You will live this world to leave it.

This nutter label is in a good way.  REAL Green is not violent or mean.  It is humbly other-orientated and reverent for the planet.  The insanity of the modern world needs a pathway for a few with the right stuff to save humanity from the transhumanism of delocalization.  If you choose this path, you will be considered odd and not quite right.  That is if you reveal yourself.  You can be successful living in both worlds but it creates a strange surreal world of incongruous juxtapositions, paradoxes, and irony.  You will walk around modern life stunned by absurdity.

It is about a return but this return is like a convict that comes out of a secure world of a prison to a tough world of freedom.  The convict has lived much of his adult life in the secure world of the prison.   He has adapted to this.  His time is done and now he is going back to an unfamiliar world.  Many times, convicts revert to old behavior.  Some even go back to the security of prison life unable to adapt.  REAL Greens are trapped in this convict’s world.  The prison is of carbon traps, path dependencies, and delocalization.  You will first be taken to a REAL Green halfway house.  It is here you will begin the process of adapting to a world tipping over into decline and decay.  This will be a tough world of discomforts but also meaning.

I am a devote green who lives the meaning that comes from pursuing a proper footprint on a planet I adore.  Every day I must do things that don’t add up with my green equation of adoration.  I drive, buy on amazon, and use too much energy.  I like comforts and want happiness for my family.  I don’t want others to suffer.  I am like an angle with the iron wings of hypocrisy.  Everything I do I see the carbon and delocalization.  I have many books on what is properly human on a finite planet.  This makes me see modern life in a surreal way when I travel the highway to a town to buy groceries.  This carbon trail and delocalization of vital needs of being humans is fascinating but also alarming.  It can end so abruptly.  I am affluent as a middle-class person but as a green I am in poverty.

I am realistic and relative about this existential predicament of the duality of living two different worlds.  I am the type of person who does not feel I can force my way of life on others.  I believe in freedom so I must respect others in the same way.  I feel caught in the middle of the extremist greens preaching Marxism and the science denying browns.  The Marxist greens want control by any means.  Browns feel justified by God to subjugate the planet.  In the middle of this I cry when I see what has been lost as I drive down the dirty highways of progress.

At the top with the elite supremist pursuing the Great Reset I see a con job that is hijacking the green movement.  They could care less about green.  Green is a good tool of control they will employ along with woke.  These devisive issues help their efforts to preserve wealth and power.  Extremist greens drink these lies up like Jim Jones Kool-Aid.  With the browns I see science denial and bible thumping.  The planet is theirs to be exploited for increased happiness because God told them this.  I see psychopaths at the top in industry and politics because this is the way to succeed in a delocalized world of affluence seeking.  They got to the top by lying, cheating, and stealing and feel their wealth and power is justified.  This is a brave new world of Marxism with the Machiavellian pursuit of power in battle with the populist.  Both are delusional but I have to admit I side with the populist who believe in freedom.  I do this grudgingly because I am first and foremost and environmentalist and populist dirty browns.

I feel like the convict leaving prison and starting a new life because I left the corporate world 18 years ago.  It took me 8 years of wandering that brought me to a permaculture homestead.  Back then I was a peak oil prepper.  As I did my prepping, I saw the importance of green.  I have always been a spiritual green.  I have a large library.   I have many books on the Osage tribe that lived sustainably in my local.  I know what TRUE Green is because the Osage lived it but I also know that world is gone. 

It is now an overpopulated earth carbon trapped and delocalized in globalism.  There is nowhere to hide.  Prepping as a lone wolf is ridiculous in the sense of finding a refuge.  If you do not have a sustainable and resilient local community then you don’t have but a few months of security in a collapse.  A decade of effort can be taken in a few hours by superior forces.  If you remain safe from bandits your prepped portfolio will eventually run out.  Resupply will depend on how far the drop is for your local.  So green prepping is about learning to live more as our ancestors did but within the trap of modern life.  The green part comes from the realization that what is more prepped is greener.

What I did start to realize after the recent 8 years is how important permaculture is to the process of prepping.  A permaculture homestead is as green as most of us can get.  TRUE Green is a semi-nomadic hunter gatherer living seasonally.  His waste streams are nutrient streams.  He is properly an apex predator.  He may be superstitious but less so than modern man with all his knowledge and gadgets that deceive him into thinking he is special and above nature.  This is extreme superstition claiming enlightenment.  

What is even better than a permaculture homestead is a community of permaculture homesteads with a small town in the center producing basics.  This is how it once was for the frontiersman here in my local 200 years ago.  This is what we must return to.  REAL Green is on the frontier which is between worlds.  So, this is a journey of returning to a previous life that is so far gone it is a new way of life.  Your first stop is the half-way house of REAL Green by embracing failure in ascetic humility.

What is green is more prepped is why you should be green not what modern greens preach which is FAKE Green.  This means living a surreal life of the halfway house.  This is living local, low carbon, and ascetic in a world of delocalization, carbon, and on demand affluence.  It is local because it is only here humans properly scale.  Delocalization is material affluence.  Affluence is a process of scale being lost.  It is dehumanizing mechanization of decreasing humanity.  Our modern world is full of too many opportunities.  This is the prison you are leaving.  It is only by being local that a true human scale is obtained. 

Keep in mind this does not necessarily mean increased security.  That depends on the local.  If a famine strikes or a medical emergency happens you may die.  Yet, it is the local where meaning is realized in a sea of meaninglessness.  When humans scale properly there is meaning.  Meaning can only be fully found in the local.  Think local and live global is a farce just as think global live local is.  REAL Green tries to thread the needle of this trap.  Everything else is an insanity of maladaptation.  Is it any wonder people need so many drugs today! 

The reason this world is so meaningless is too many things and too much knowledge.  This out of scale condition is really too much baggage and too much noise.  Green prepping is using this world to leave it as much as you can.   This is a hybrid world so a mental skill of agility must be learned.  It is a world of salvage and triage.  This is the basis of REAL Green wisdom.  Much will have to be rejected and much salvaged because of the dual worlds you are navigating.   This is the nature of a hybrid material and metaphysical world you will find yourself in.  This makes it surreal like the convict feels when he stands at the gates between worlds.

Low carbon is essential to green prepping.  Low carbon means staying as close to the local as possible for energy sources and energy use.  Food is the most basics low carbon capture.  A garden and animals are a requirement for REAL Green.   The support network of a small towns supporting permaculture localism is REAL Green.  Anything larger is not green.  Really permaculture involves homesteads and small towns.  In my case I need heating so it is also firewood.  It means rewilding because a good permaculture homestead has a forage and hunting potential.  It means knowing your water with strategies of collection and purification.  Food, water, and energy are all interrelated and the very basics of human life.  Food and water require energy.  Energy requires you being satisfied with food and water so you have the energy to collect energy.  This is the circularity of REAL Green.

Your permaculture homestead will have to focus on being more circular in a linear world.  Delocalization breaks the circle.  Ideally your permaculture homestead will have to depend on a local of other permaculture homesteads and a small town of craftsmen and lite professionals.  Doctors, teachers, and administrators are a must but in a REAL Green small town setting.  The reason being you will have to be a jack of many trades but a specialist in a few.  A proper permaculture homestead can’t make it on its own.  Localized community is a keystone requirement. 

I lack community and other permaculture homesteads around me but I am still better than urban areas.  Local farmers around the Ozarks where I live still retain some of the old ways.  Talking to another permaculture homestead digitally is fine but it is not the real thing.  The digital and the car culture are still delocalizing but this is all I have.  I hope better success for you and I write these words for some who may realize what I speak of.  My permaculture homestead is considered a hobby farm because it is not profitable in the world of the status quo.  You can’t properly live middle class and be a TRUER Green permaculture homestead.  Mine is lacking the keystone local variable of other homesteads connected by small towns.  I try to live local in a world of delocalization.  I am a convict.  I am in a halfway house.

Green prepping is about asceticism.  You will have to be a devote conservationist.  You will have to embrace austerity if you expect to be prepped.  This means learning a routine of pain and drudgery.  I fast twice a week to feel the pain of hunger.  This fasting manifests both physical and mental sacrifice.  I often feel like “is this worth it” when I reflect on REAL Green?  I often wonder why I make big efforts at small returns.  Modern life is about small effort bringing big returns. 

Low carbon capture is a marginal living.  It is a life of poverty because staying local will not provide a modern life of affluence.  All the talk these days about localism is really just a hobby life.  Real localism is a poverty of sorts.  Ascetic living is embracing daily routines of boring redundant work.  It means daily chores that are low return.  It means little time for leisure.  Your leisure must be the satisfaction of being ascetic in an affluent world.  Green prepping is about conservation because being prepped is about a low footprint.  Affluence is obtained but this is a spiritual affluence.

Voluntary simplicity is the key to green prepping.  It is a poverty of wants and needs in ascetism.  It is about living a mental condition of cognitive dissonance of being trapped in the surreal of two worlds like the convict at the gates of prison looking out at the parking lot.  No loved ones there just the sheriff that will transport you to the halfway house.  The probation officer will call you and tell you how to behave.  In the case of REAL Green the probation officer is the reality of insecurity.  Life will be your probation officer contacting you with failure.  Failure must become your friend. 

This is the lonely world you will live in being REAL Green because very few will be living a REAL Green life of green prepping.   You will be that convict with no loved ones to pick you up.  You will be alone.  It is so easy to return to that previous life of being a carbon criminal living the thrill of a delocalized life.   Indulging in affluence like a glutton.  This is how civilization lives and has lived for generations and now you are seeking to leave this as best you can.

If you believe in a world in decline that is heading for the cliff you will instinctively be a prepper.  In this respect you will do what you can to prepare.  If you do this long enough you will see that it is only TRUE Green living that is properly prepped.  The TRUE Green world is gone.  TRUE Green is also about famine and emergencies so there really is no refuge being a self-conscious animal.  In a localized world this might mean no safety net and or emergency services.  What REAL Green attempts is living in both worlds as best one can.  This seems simple enough but it is really very difficult. 

REAL Green makes a transformation once failure is embraced.  This transformation is about acceptance that modern life is dying and a failure.  The narrative of growth and prosperity is a lie.  It is the humility of being a convict at the prison gate contemplating a return to an alien normal life of true localism that is a key.  The reason this is key is the meaning of it.  The truth is the highest attainment of humanism.  Most can’t handle the truth or are not able to face the truth.  A child is protected because of this.  Many adults live delusional lives because the truth is too scary.  The wisdom of insecurity says there is more security in living insecure.  Modern life teaches you to be optimistic when pessimism is called for.  REAL Green blends them in pessimistic optimism because it is the optimistic journey that is embraced not the destination.  The destination is death.

The Key aspect to REAL Green comes with the pain and suffering of this surreal world of living between worlds at the prison gate.  It is meaning that comes from the humility of acceptance of failure.  It is seeing the lie of modern life but also seeing the trap of it.  Just because you see the truth does not mean you can transcend your existential situation of being part of the lie.  So REAL Green is about personal acceptance in humility.  It is about accepting consequences and doing your time.  It is also the insecurity of leaving the prison of prosperity.

It is at this point you go forth on a journey of renewal and restoration.  You also go forth in a world of a carbon convict living in the world of the thrills of affluence.  The key to REAL Green is letting the demons’ become angles if only angles with iron wings.  It is this acceptance that will liberate you if only for brief moments.  As you get old if you are lucky, as your body and mind decays, it is brief moments of meaning that are so special and worth living for.

Does it matter?  In my opinion it doesn’t.  That is the ultimate acceptance of the human condition.  When you die your ego dies.  There is no looking down from above in a heaven.  Heaven is here on earth.  You can make it a hell if you like.  Life is so short you are already dead.  In a blink of your eyes you will be on your death bed.  Or in a brief moment a car wreck will be a flash of light and then you are gone.  Yet, there is something more and it is meaning that comes with a connectivity of letting go in the wisdom of insecurity that opens your journey up to special moments.  The truth is special in the sea of meaningless human dwell in.   

Our lonely state of self-consciousness where we must relive our mortality daily is maddening.  It is human instinct to find meaning and meaning is a reflection of the truth.  In nature this whole issue is moot because other species are in a natural state of grace.  An oak tree is just an oak tree.  It does not try to be a lion.  It is this grace that humans crave.  It is the REAL Green naturalness of living where the wisdom of insecurity is embraced that true happiness becomes nearer.