I am not green but I practice greener living. I am carbon trapped and path dependent in affluence. I am locked into a destructive civilization. I do know what is greener after 60 years of life with the last 20 dedicated to what is greener. It took ten of those years to get on a greener path and the last ten to build a greener homestead and monestary. This is still not green but it is greener. I am prepped for a world in a paradigm of decline. What is greener is more prepped. What is greener is more spirtual. Combine these and you have spirtual permaculture.
I am being a scold. I am engaging in green pontification but mainly in observation. I am a hipocrit too. I find enjoyment in musing. It is liberating to be a scold. As a permaculture farmer I am always pissed off because there is not enough time, money and people to do what needs to be done. Yet, in a few moments in the day there are special feelings like when a quail jumps up in a beautiful glade of grass I helped along. I am as human as you are. So really, I am scolding myself. I am getting old a weak and the thought of being poor and miserable is terrifying. So, don’t think I am above you.
The left represents green today. I am speaking to the left. I would speak another sermon to the right. The left is pushing dishonest science and their conduct is fraudulent. They are bribing their constituents with green new deals. When they are called out on this, they employ subterfuge. The left’s gaslighting leadership is led by the wealthy. Affluence is in not green. Affluent green leadership is now an ideology of the great reset and 4th industrial revolution. This is said to be green and will save the planet. Tech is anti-life and anti-community once it suffers diminishing returns so today’s green leadership is the definition of a corrupt anti-green.
Green is ideological these days instead of natural. The green community now expects you to be woke. Woke is devisive and focuses on the ideology of victimhood. Many if not most green academics talk green but don’t live it. They talk about abstract ideas of green that in most cases are so colored with ideology they aren’t even talking green anymore. They are in their ivory towers pontificating. They build shiny new fake green buildings offering green certifications. They drive and fly to conferences. This non green activity is supported by the student loan complex that pumps billions of dirty fossil fuel produced wealth into their tenured coffers. This is just more of the administrative state that must be deconstructed to get greener.
This green conduct is fraudulent. Greens are pushing anti-science to control and manipulate science for ideological ends. Science is no longer objective and neutral. Science today is guided by cancel culture and information management instead of the truth. Science is corrupted by technology. Technology is a destructive part of human nature. When tech hits diminishing returns, it is anti-life. Science is now a green anti-life charade. You can’t fix environmental destruction with what is destroying it. If you pretend you are then your conduct is fraudulent. Embracing Marxism and socialism as a fix for capitalism and markets is just a different shade of the same destructiveness.
Injecting woke ideology of gender, race and sexual orientation into the green conversation only succeeds in dividing the green community from what is greener. The injection of indigenous culture into the conversation by people engage in fraudulent behavior only corrupts the vital message of the indigenous who are themselves increasingly corrupted by the ideology of sustainable development of the technocrats. The proper indigenous message is appropriate technology not the current green technology of smart, electric, and centralized. Appropriate is decentralized with less electric and it is smart enough.
Technology is now a sacrament in science. Scientist are now the priest of political and economic scientism. Science is now a religion and it has made green a religion too. Delocalization and transhumanism of the machine are the new cathedrals of worship. There is much talk of decoupling, dematerialization, and deindustrialization but it is mostly talk. Affluence when in diminishing returns can’t decoupled from carbon. Dematerialization is not possible when more technology and efficiency are the goal to get green. Talk of deindustrialization is just a wealth transfer exercise. They talk about ending fossil fuels for electric that is produced by fossil fuels. This is a circular gaming to stay technological and affluent.
The degrowth community is also corrupted. Degrowth is the only way forward both active and passive. The problem with the degrowth community is they can’t sell pain and suffering so they play the noble lie game. Degrowth is increased poverty. Steady state economics is when degrowth is over. The only way you can make it palatable is with spirituality. The only affluence in degrowth is spirtual affluence. Spirtual affluence is only found through grace. This spirituality is of less materialism and more humility. It is ascetically meek and belittled in Spartan living arrangements. This is not the type of ideology that can produce a movement so it is lied about to get traction.
What is green? Green is an oral culture that is made up of small bands of families that relate to each other as a tribe. They engage in semi-nomadic hunting and gathering that is minimalist and let nature set complexity. They use appropriate tech of the natural science of food, water, and shelter. The don’t need to rewild because they are already wild. They engage in small transient agriculture that is disruptive but disruptive in a good way. Small scale activities that create localized succession is beneficial to the ecosystem. They engage in social activities that are family orientated and technologically appropriate with minimalism. They wander just as the bison and the elk do by nature.
Green today can only be the effort at getting more like the semi-nomadic hunter gather and less like a modern green. I call this greener and it is relative and realistic. If you want to be green today all you can do is try to be greener. Don’t be fooled by EVs, Solar, and wind. Don’t be bribed by people who are corrupt who talk green but live otherwise. These are the people who fly to climate conferences or practice environmental and social governance from their Wall Street perch. This is bribery. ESG is a woke lie to make people feel better as a victim or victimizer. This is a color revolution tool of control. There is nothing egalitarian with woke because these are lies and serve the unnatural elite.
Family is greener. In fact, it is only in and through the family green is possible because family is the basis of human nature. The modern green is embracing anti-family woke policy. Decentralization is green. The modern green embraces the centralized technocratic administrative state that is pushing a controlled population with technology of the machine. The machine is anti-life. The administrative state is a product of civilization in diminishing returns. Socialism is an administrative state. Capitalism and free and fair markets work at the local level and so does socialism. They do not scale in any other way and it is only at scale there is balance. Balance is green.
Urbanism is not green and can’t be made green. Walkable communities that are urban are only walkable because trucks haul in food and goods. Water is collected with machines. Waste is removed with machines in effluents that are not nutrient streams but instead poisons of eutrophication and forever chemicals. Urbanism allows elitism and elitism leads to the corruption of power. Corruption and power are not green. There are no green cities and no green elites. They can’t even be made greener because of the lies. They represent the fall of man.
Localism is greener. Permaculture localism is the act of being greener. The destructiveness of machines and lifestyles of delocalization are made greener with localism. Seasonality and intermitency are embraced to get greener. Localism allows seasonality and intermitency naturally. If batteries and machines producing electricity are used, they are decentralized and appropriate in scale meaning small applications and simpler. Fossil fuels are used but minimally. Robust materials are used sparingly where they have valuable cost benefits. It is understood that all these wonders no matter how appropriately applied are still supplied by an inappropriate and destructive civilization.
Spiritualism is green when it is humble and accepting. It is accepted that we got to this place and there are consequences. There will be a price paid for affluence even for those who were never affluent. We are humble when we negotiate with affluence so as to employ a wisdom of less. It is always the case these days less technology and affluent living is greener and more is less. This is because the world has tipped over.
It is understood that urbanism means more affluence. Urbanism brings us knowledge and affluent things so through green wisdom we accept that urbanism is the problem. Civilization is what got us here to the precipice. It is time to leave. Yet because of our lock-in this departure can only be greener. We can do hard things with less. We can say no. We can suffer. We can’t have our cake and eat it. We can only live the paradox of dualism which these days is a Catch 22 of predicaments and problems.
In my last post I spoke about the Maya. They knew the cycles of life. They knew through cyclic wisdom when civilization needed to be deconstructed. We are now a linear civilization of globalism. This is based on a linear ideology of manifest destiny. It is beset with the incongruous juxtapositions of dualism. Harmony is not possible with globalism so to be greener it must be deconstructed. Cities must be depopulated and knowledge centers left to wither.
Yet in some way in the blinding light of the sacred this is truth and the consequences natural. If we are natural then corruption is a component of life. What we have become and what we have done is natural in life’s ascending levels of abstraction. If this is the case then what has happened is as natural as not. In the cyclic there is a reason life did this. Grace is cyclic so this too will end. The linear dwells in the nonlinear so it is time to turn back.
If you respect the sacred in a mystic sense then at a certain point you stop the anger and bargaining and accept death because that is what corruption is. You can’t get new life without the destructive of death. In this respect then greener in its highest spiritual attainment is the mystic. Go forth and do greener things in a dirty world. You can’t help some things but you can change others. This is the nature of determined free will. They exist together in the dance of life. Dance beside the cliff and don’t take things too seriously. Ignore my scolding.
REAL Green Adaptation 
Hi just wondering if you can expand on your comment on degrowth and what you said about a so-called “noble lie”?
I do agree with the certain need to make it spiritual. However I can’t really see any other way. I have been following certain thinkers on the field like David Holgrem and Timothée Parrique but i don’t necessarily see too much rose-tinted glasses occuring.
I am currently completing a Permaculture course and whilst I don’t want to trap myself in any certain dogma I do think that there isn’t much else out there in terms of trying to address how we can systemically live in a time of energy descent.
PS I have just purchased a 30 acre property with my wife and we are looking to shape it into as much as a sustainable system as we can (it even came with a piglet so now I have some husbandry skills to learn). I like seeing your writing and will continue to follow your work, thanks for the brutal honesty on things.
PPS Full transparency, I haven’t quit my dayjob as the mortgage is ever present so there is a bit of hierocracy on my part in terms of how I live and how I want to live.
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Gregory, thanks for the comment. I enjoy the opportunity to help others explore what I am doing. I will have something for you tomorrow or the next day. I need to think about your questions.
shoal
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Cheers Shoal, looking forward to it 🙂
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First, I am not a writer so my style is more oral and speaking out loud as would be done around the campfire if I were with good friends. This is the shamanic way. I rarely support what I say with facts although in this day and age it is at your finger tips. I try to point people in the direction to find the facts that support what I say. The metaphysical I speak of can’t be ascertained by googling. The metaphysical is about experience. I try to translate this experience but the spirtual must be your experience not mine.
I am first and foremost a permaculture farmer and homesteader so I don’t have a lot of time to write. I am a green shaman. Before you judge me as a nutter let me explain. I focus on the spirtual in a time of science. I love science so what I try to do is separate them. To be more exact I try to put them in their place in the human drama. Separating and reducing is the problem today with science. The spirtual is neglected and science reigns’ supreme. Religion is not the same as spirituality so that too needs to be put in the right place. Religion is a codification of the spirtual so in a way science based. The word is not the sacred but a reflection of the sacred.
In earlier times a shaman had the function in a tribe of looking to the spirtual. Others hunted or had war functions. The women took care of camp chores. As a green shaman I focus on connecting with the force of life within nature. This means I am very environmentally orientated but a key point is relative and realistic to my carbon trap and path dependencies. I am locked into a civilization that is destructive so I too am inevitably environmentally destructive. Rejecting our trap is not an option nor the proper way to handle our destructiveness. I try to bend it in a greener direction.
What is green is more prepped so as a doomer who studies decline, green is preparatory as well as spirtual. In fact, spiritually green offers huge advances in affluence if one connects to nature. To connect to nature means being in nature so I am rural not urban. I have lived in big cities and practice globalism in the 80s. I once believed in sustainable development but now I am local and permaculture. I also did a stint with industrial agriculture with the hope of reforming it greener. This was disappointing. It can’t be done so what I preach now is how one should leave industrial profit oriented agriculture. The more profit in what you do generally the less permaculture it is. The profit in permaculture is spirtual.
“Hi just wondering if you can expand on your comment on degrowth and what you said about a so-called “noble lie”?”
A noble lie is when people of authority or wisdom use falsehoods to explain or put at ease people who can’t handle the truth. It is most often used for the young. Increasingly it is used by the psychopaths in control to harness and influence the populous to maintain their power and wealth. In this case it is a blatant lie but often there are shades of lies which can appear to be noble lies. The pandemic is case in point. There were many noble lies that actually were probably blatant lies.
Degrowth is the only way forward in relation to the macro. The planet and civilization are tipping over into decline. When I say planet, I mean instability of systems and climate is increasing. Diversity in decline. Ecosystem decline and localized failure is apparent everywhere. The planet is in a succession of less complexity and more instability with its life system. Civilization is declining in complexity and stability. Combine these two and you have hard degrowth that is being forced on all. The top will be forced into it regardless of action. The bottom is a different story with niches that can be populated where constructive growth is possible but within a general environment of destructive decline.
Spirtually it is a different story. Spiritually we are in the darkness with science usurping what should be the spirtual realm. The imbalance of our science nature is the culprit with spirtuality but also the consequences of industrialization. So, we are already at peak darkness of the spirt. This means the spirit is set to enter a period of light. We are set to grow and find affluence spiritually albeit in a time of pain, suffering, and increasing poverty. Go to Energyshifts.net for an overview of the cyclic.
Degrowthers use the tool of “noble lie” and or self-deception to sell degrowth on the public. It is not going to be painless and it will not be something you can sell on a population as the way forward even if it is the better way forward. In the micro it can be sold to the awakened. Dematerialization and decoupling from complex networks is a keystone but this also means abandonment, dysfunction, and irrational. I like to call this surreal because you will be going with the grain of planetary realities but against the grain of civilization and its narrative.
“I do agree with the certain need to make it spiritual. However I can’t really see any other way. I have been following certain thinkers on the field like David Holgrem and Timothée Parrique but i don’t necessarily see too much rose-tinted glasses occuring.”
When you are honest like we are then you understand the idea of increasing poverty is troubling. Thinking of less is always going to be difficult. This is especially true when it means less success and more discomfort. Yet, my point is since the planet is trending this way, you will find more success and comfort embracing the way of things. This means relatively and realistically embracing degrowth. Since you are doing this locally this can actually mean growth.
This is because in niches and microclimes there are places of opportunity and growth when a complex system breaks down. I would recommend for those who can to find these places. Not so much to keep growth going because this is pleasurable, it is more to be able to growth into degrowth. A homestead and permaculture system needs growth to get started but once started it can be used as a lifeboat. It can be used to do less and have more spirituality. Meaning is the ultimate affluence. It is what gives courage and all other virtues rest upon courage.
“I am currently completing a Permaculture course and whilst I don’t want to trap myself in any certain dogma I do think that there isn’t much else out there in terms of trying to address how we can systemically live in a time of energy descent.”
Well put! Local and green degrowth that is relative and realistic is the only way forward. It can also mean growth to degrowth. In a time of net energy decline there is still energy there is just not increasingly affordability of energy as was the case over many generations. There is also the problem of interruptions with shortages and scarcity. We are now entering this time so it is those who have adapted away from fossil energy and towards biomass that will be more resilient and sustainable.
Real resilience and sustainability is about family, tribe, and small community. If these are not also adapted then no matter how much the individual does, he will still be subject to the deficiencies of his local community. The global decline can’t be escaped from by anyone. Even the most subsistent are at risk of their neighbors who are not. There are few places to go unlike when we had new worlds and virgin resources to utilize. Localism in REAL Green is a way to avoid being locked-in to dogma of any one way of doing things. Treat your local as unique. This goes deeper by treating your ego and spirituality as unique. This does not mean commonality in regards to reality but means different modes of adaptability according to unique locals.
“PS I have just purchased a 30 acre property with my wife and we are looking to shape it into as much as a sustainable system as we can (it even came with a piglet so now I have some husbandry skills to learn). I like seeing your writing and will continue to follow your work, thanks for the brutal honesty on things.”
I have 380 acres. 80 acres are mine and 300 are a family farm owned by 3 other extended families of cousins. My grandfather bought the farm in 1948. They mainly use it for recreations like hunting and fishing. I do permaculture and rewilding. Both of these help the hunting and fishing because it means a healthy environment wild life likes. I utilize 80 acres as a cow/goat grazing system with low stocking rates. It is a multi-species grazing system on polyculture pasture. This means low amount of tractor work and little chemicals.
I have 40 acres in hay production. On the whole farm there are 4 barns, a guest cabin, and my house. One barn is a place where the extended family hangs out in for deer camp and fishing weekends. I store some stuff there. I have a large equipment and storage barn. I have a goat kidding barn. I have my shop that is a garage and working area. There ae wells I maintain, roads, and fences. So, as you can see growth is needed to degrowth. You have to take what you can from a dying civilization and build up local resilience so here degrowth is adapted.
I am very busy. I am not saying what I have is better than what you have. Again, it is based on your unique localism of people, place, and personality. I actually wish I had less with less of the other family involved. Not that I do not love my extended family it is just they don’t care about REAL Green spirtual permaculture and my homesteading. They are completely absorbed in the status quo.
It took me 30 years to develop my homesteading skills. It took the last 10 to create a homestead and permaculture system. You can speed that up with more money and people but there are cost benefit tradeoffs. Time is an unique resource that can’t be substituted. There are also learning curves and luck. I would say you easily need a decade to do a proper REAL Green homestead and monestary with all the necessary ingredients. You can’t just buy one because it is a system and a process. It is living and constructed.
The key part of REAL Green is the beginning with spirituality of being awakened. The nature of this is as a journey to enlightenment and transformation. It really is about the journey not the destination. My creation will in a few years likely be an estate sale or a crumbing relic of the past because all things turn to dust and life is mortal. So, if it is refuge you are looking for then you will likely be less fulfilled if instead you treat this as a process that is a journey of discovery.
“PPS Full transparency, I haven’t quit my dayjob as the mortgage is ever present so there is a bit of hierocracy on my part in terms of how I live and how I want to live.”
I actually recommend people approach this process like hobby farming. It is extremely difficult to make a living in permaculture farming and not drift into industrial farming. I recommend some of the family work in town to get income. I am living off investments from 25 years in a dirty fossil fuel world of corporate life as a finance manager. I am retired but I am actually busier now. I am much happier but to be honest what I do is tough, frustrating, and often painful. It is mentally challenging because I am going against the grain of the status quo and trying to go more towards the planetary trend.
Life is supporting me spiritually with the happiness that come with getting closer to the sacred. The truth is being exposed to me. I feel enlightened. I live a wisdom of insecurity because this can all end quickly and what this gives me is the humility and acceptance to power through and not get trapped in uncertainty and distractions. I often feel fear and pain but the key point is I do not fear fear or shy away from pain. What is coming with life in collpase is terrifying but I accept it and embrace it and the windfall is spirtual wealth
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Thanks for the very earnest response. I had to read it twice.
Don’t worry. although I come with over 20 years experience trained in physical science I have realised this ‘Cartesian’ way of viewing the world was putting me on a bad trajectory. I am more open now to ideas that don’t simply come out of the ridged narrow mindset that can accompany the reductionistic approach in modern science.
I recall getting really angry reading Charles Eisentstein’s climate change book as he really got to the core and I felt resistance. Later it was reading Carolyn Merchant and The Nutmeg’s Curse by Amitav Ghosh that I have (not necessarily abandoned) started to allow different thoughts, feelings and perspectives into my life. I actually used to be proud in my 20s being a hyper-rational athiest, but now a decade on I realise I was trapping myself from new experiences and truly experiencing the world in a deeper manner.
So, no I don’t think you are a nutter at all. Shamanism is a recent emergence for me and I do think (or rather feel) that it has been asleep in me for a long long time and only barely waking up now.
I appreciated your frank honesty there, especially your notion of “spirtual wealth”. The collapse is terrifying but I take comfort there are other people out there who have trod the path ahead of me so i do not feel alone.
10 years, that sounds like a reasonable time frame and I want to resist the urge to hurry it along. Time is a precious resource and I need to enjoy the journey.
Peace
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You are awakened. If you ever need any advice on the nuts and bolts of permaculture localism just check in with me. When I say advice this is not I am the teacher and you the pupil. This is more that maybe I have tried something you may be interested in trying. The key aspect to REAL Green is localism. This is your journey in a unique place with your people. It is your spirituality. Where we cross paths is in the fractals of the sacred. What I mean by this is the life force that inhabits me inhabits you. Go forth and do good work locally.
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