REAL Green Adaptation

The theory of parallel needs priming with these reads:

Mixing metaphysical with the physical trends of lower affluence.

(6) Going Beyond Limits To Growth [Newly Updated]

System thought primer:

https://389781d4-2000-4800-8ff2-c13e64a6aa0c.filesusr.com/ugd/94fdd9_d0ee5f5e0c264527ba423ad920a8bd5c.pdf?index=true

The climate hysteria of renewable fantasies of the left.

A climate love story

Net energy decline which is both geologic and economic:

https://ourfiniteworld.com/2022/08/23/why-no-politician-is-willing-to-tell-us-the-real-energy-story/

https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/2022/07/15/235-the-affordability-crisis/

I call my theory of saving the world parallel.  This is a theory of what if anything could be done to lessen the difficulties of adjusting to the end of globalism.  If you feel globalism will power through its problems with substitution and knowledge than this discussion is a waste of time.  If you feel uneasy about what is going on this discussion is worth a read. 

This global system has generated enormous wealth.  This civilization is now locked into the effects of this wealth production such that a transition to an alternative will be painful.  A look at how this winding down of an unsustainable system could be addressed is worthwhile. 

There are no plans I can find to deal with decline by declining.  We are stumbling into a system breakdown that has no example in history.  Civilizational collapse is well understood with historical accounts but no previous examples compare in size and extent.  The interconnectedness and the complete coverage of the entire planet is unique.

Months are now equivalent to years in this process.  Resources and production of goods and services should not be wasted at this late stage of globalism.  It should be a critical effort to invest the remaining resources and production in an alternative system. 

This theory of parallel is useful to understand why the global system can’t change.  The reason I call it a theory is this system can’t imagine its end, so when I discuss how to end it less painfully the prescriptions are merely theorizing.  Yet, this theorizing offers actionable advice to the grassroots where change is possible. 

The condition of civilization now is a reflection of complex ecosystem at their climax.  Nature offers a blueprint for such conditions.  Our civilization views itself as exceptional because of knowledge and tech yet, our system is just a subset of the greater ecosystem that governs all life including ours.  Unless we reflect on nature and not our exceptionalism we are barreling into a collapse.

Parallel theory would be the construction of a global lifeboat while globalism is still full of vigor.  Evidence of globalism’s decline is apparent everywhere with physical infrastructure.  The decline is evident with the abstract with systems and networks.  A subterfuge is created with the amount of wealth still produced.  Technology is deceptive too with numerous advances but with less and less real breakthrough technologies.

What is apparent is the wrong wealth is being produced.  Production is focused on a life globalism has created that is clearly going to end because of limits to growth.  A trend to more tech and efficiency is likewise a dangerous path dependency.  With each new advance older and more stable technology gives way to new tech that is more potent and efficient but less stable. 

A technological diminishing return is apparent now.   In many cases more problems are created than solved.  We are close to the point where problems outweigh solutions.  This is the nature of technology and efficiency.  There are tradeoffs with sustainability and technological advances.  Efficiency and performance without reflection of limits and benefits is a dangerous trend.  The results are truly revolutionary in that creative destruction of technology can damage the fabric of civilization like a hidden cancer. 

The theory of parallel is a crisis plan to address the coming end to globalism.  This plan seeks to use globalism to leave it.  If undertaken it means the end of globalism.  We can’t transition to more resilience and sustainability without growth.  Cities must depopulation into the rural areas.  The current 80/20 population mix of urban to rural means there is not enough infrastructure for this.  Globalism is the only way to build up the lifeboats of permaculture with farms and small towns.

The current trend of global administrative states and controlling interests is smart urbanism.  This is the great reset of the World Economic Forum.  There are over 2000 billionaires that are the controlling interests influencing a self-organizing system nobody has real control over.   Their plans center on controlled urban populations. 

The result is centralization with increased efficiency but the tradeoff is greater instability not less.  It is centralization and efficiency that are becoming unaffordable.  Efficiency is creating brittle resilience.  Centralization is creating cities that can’t survive shocks.  Modern cities are a mirror of systematic overextension.  This is overshoot and nature treats overshoot the same regardless of species.

This futurist program of the great reset is resulting in the transhumanism of tech that prefers automation.  The dehumanization of people is resulting from digital interfaces.  This great reset and 4^th industrial revolution is a technocratic development since the 1970s that has become reality because of technological advances and a global civilization. 

This was once conspiracy but currently the global controlling interests are now in the open with their plans.  The UN is part of this with its sustainable development agenda.   Once sustainable areas of the world are now locked into this program and are increasingly unsustainable.  Urban areas are increasingly mega urban expanses covering entire regions.  Support structures for such large urban expanses are increasingly unstable and yet these controlling interests are doubling down on further concentration with more technology not less.

The idea of parallel would be the opposite of the great reset.  This also would be done with informed consent of the world’s populations not deception.  Education is the keystone to the theory of parallel.  It would be similar to advising the global population an asteroid is coming that would do immense damage.

Globalism is ending and it is vital to recreate an alternative.  Yet, the critical idea of parallel is globalism is needed to create the transition mechanism.  Growth will be needed to degrowth.  The only way to do a direction switch is a parallel system.

This theory of a parallel’s primary objective is to show just how hard it would be to change direction at the top with a shared global effort.  In fact, it shows this direction change is for all practical purposes impossible.  This theory does instead offer the grassroot a plan forward with the efforts of localism.  This mirrors nature with ecosystem succession.  Nature offers niches to species when the complex system breaks down.  You can be one of those locals that adapts but time is short and you will need to grow to degrowth.

The first effort of the theory of parallel would involve the deconstruction of the administrative state and the downsizing of the controlling interest’s wealth.   The small but powerful international class of financial and political elites who effectively rule the global system would have to give up much of their wealth.  This would be returned to the public domain.  The mechanism for this is already in place.  It’s called democracy with free and fair markets.  The rule of law would be reinstated and the moral hazard of the controlling elites ended.

The deconstruction of the administrative state means academia and the scientific community too.  The medical industry with all its bloated overhead is also on the chopping block.  It means reducing the number of lawyers and accountants who are rigging this system.  The lobbyist and think tanks likewise need to be greatly reduced.  This is all overhead that ensures elite power and privilege that is the problem.  It is overhead that is parasitic not productive.

The so-called “FIRE” of financial, Insurance, and Real Estate industries must be greatly reduced.  These industries are speculative and do not provide real productivity at the level they represent in the economy.  They discourage localism by placing a value on centralization and concentrated wealth.  These need to be reduced dramatically because it is places of concentration where power corrupts.  These industries are dominated by a few controlling interests with hedge funds and Wallstreet plutocrats.

Discretionary industries like leisure and entertainment must be greatly reduced.  These industries are highly energy consumptive and offer little productive value.  Hollywood needs to be eliminated as a cancer that promotes destructive fantasy and is now a propaganda arm of the globalist. 

Long distance travel and the hospitality industry would be greatly reduced and instead a localized low energy version created.  People of the 18^th and 19^th centuries actually had more satisfaction with their leisure than we do today.  Theme parks eliminated where they are oversized and out of proportion.  Consumerism with all the strip malls and mega malls need to be reduced by an order of magnitude.

Specialization needs to be adapted.  There needs to be an education system that allows some specialization but the majority of the education needs to be general and having to do with homesteading with food and energy as the focus.  This education must focus on community with local priorities not delocalization and transhumanism of the car culture and digital web. 

Today universities are turning out graduates at great cost who are increasingly producing ideology not productive skills.  The whole college system is a scam of trillions of dollars that have resulted in tenured professors that barely teach.  New shiny buildings are the focus of the large endowments instead of real education.  Sports are pushed with huge budgets and massive stadiums.  Most of the population needs to learn real skills.

We would then be ready to use what is left of globalism to leave it.  Keep in mind the reduction of this administrative state would be painful with loss of economic activity and jobs.  These sectors have grown so large their downsizing would be economically destructive.  It is important to understand they will be eliminated regardless by the process of decline.  Initiating their demise proactively will ensure these centers of parasitic wealth destruction occur first not last.

Net energy decline and economic decay are both part of the current destructive trend of global decline.  If you greatly reduce fossil fuels and the economics of globalism you are looking at economic activity dropping 50% or more.  That is a catastrophic number and will mean loss of an affluence people are not prepared for.  This can’t be done without moving people to the land and in the activity of raising food.  This is the only option for a less bad ride down the decline curve. 

The global economy is heading for dramatic loss without a place to go.  Without globalism the mega cities that dot the globe will be forced to depopulate by systematic decay.  The point of parallel is the recognition of this and the building of an alternative while resources are still available.  Only globalism can produce what is necessary to make this transition away from globalism.  This is the paradox of degrowth.  Growth is needed to degrowth.

It would take a decade to make this transition with complete global focus.  This effort is similar in cost and time to the failed policies of the left who are pushing a delusional NetZero of more of what is destroying the world. 

The Fake social justice of the globalist sustainable development plans is a Marxist lie to coopt populations.  This is a delusional attempt to use inadequate so-called green energy systems to keep operating the current system.  Their social justice warriors want a welfare state to keep people under control so they can force populations to decarbonize.   Yet, the system itself will require more carbon to create the 4^th industrial revolution.  The elite have no intention of downsizing their lives.  This is proved by their flying private jets to climate conferences.

The great reset is seeking production that can be automated and people that can be taken out of the productive process thereby increasing efficiencies.  This is the end game of automation.  Technology and efficiency eventually are policies of dehumanization. 

Transhumanism of the 4^th industrial revolution is the goal.  These elites and technocrats believe machines will supersede humans at some point.  This is their idea of singularity which is the merger of what is human and machine.  This is a policy of centralization and a mechanical compression of human activity.  This is the blueprint for the global controlling interest being presented as social justice and green.

The polar opposite is required so one can see just how dangerous these globalists are.  You can’t embrace less affluence with a global leadership seeking more.  Instead, existing wealth is needed to downsize into less affluence.  Less affluence is in the cards because of net energy decline and economic decay.  There is a short window to get this done of maybe a decade.

There are two doors ahead.  One door is a delusional attempt to continue what can’t be continued forced into decline.  The other is acceptance of a plan to adapt to something less because the reality of decline is accepted.  Both doors lead to systematic decline.  One door offers a plan based upon the reality of decline and the other is a plan is rejecting decline by doubling down on what created globalism in the first place. 

Both doors once opened will be shut.  There is no going back to what was.  Looking back in the review mirror 2018 appears to be the peak of globalism.  This was the turning point now it is a steady decline down.  Where and when a new stable level is found is unclear.  What is clear is decisions at this point have a critical effect.  This is true at all levels.   The top appears locked into plans that will make decline worse but the bottom is a different story.

The populist movements around the globe actually have a less bad approach.   Their ideas of less regulation and decentralization of power centers along with strong families are the way forward.  They are still delusional with their idea that they can continue the type of affluence of the past which is doomed.  All political systems are locked into this decline process but some are worse than others.  What is the worst is the globalist version.  I recommend if you want to go local then embrace the populists even if you find some of their policies unpalatable.

This theory of a parallel path forward of globalism and localism would have an important underlying compact of the urban and rural.  The back to the landers that will be the pioneers of parallel will be treated with special respect by the urban dwellers.  If there is no compact then those in urban wealth centers will dominate these back to the landers.  If the urbanites realize they will need the back to the landers once globalism dissolves, they will treat them like those who will prepare their way once urban areas are forced to depopulate.  The back to the landers will establish the outpost for the urbanites to emigrate to.

The back to the landers will embrace intermittency and seasonality.  They will embrace localism by disconnecting from the car culture and digital web appropriately.  This means a magnitude of reduction from these influences.  This will facilitate appropriate tech which is no tech and low tech.   These are beefed up with the best of modernism to enhance this appropriate tech.  This is a tech hybridization just as parallel is a hybrid system.

Renewables and batteries can be part of this but with the understanding they will be only used for the transition period of parallel.  The useful life of these systems is short.  They can’t create themselves.  Without fossil fuels and globalism renewable systems will wear out in 10-30 years. 

Renewables will help in the transition to animal, passive energy systems, and biomass.  Simple and manual renewable systems that are decentralized to the town and home level should be the focus not vast solar and wind farms.

Fossil fuels will still be used but made appropriate.  They will serve as back up for when natural disasters hit.  It will be understood these have a shelf life too.  Once globalism is gone so too will adequate fossil fuels.   Fossil fuels these days because of net energy decline are as much economic as geologic.  During the transition of parallel they will be needed but utilized in an appropriate way.  Appropriate here means enhancement not reliance. 

Fossil fuels have to be transitioned away from because of depletion and net energy decline.  Renewables are just fossil fuel extenders.  Renewables can’t power the existing system.   Their current failures in Europe and California spells the end of the last hope for a continuation of globalism.  This is not being admitted to by the elites and the administrative state because there is no alternative.  If you are awakened to this reality then as an individual you will make other arrangements if you value survival.

Parallel focuses on simplicity with volunteerism.  This is the proactive effort to downsize and simplify.  It must be appropriate with low tech or no tech.  It must be about salvage of the old with the new.   Most importantly it is the triage of those aspects of modernism with no future.  It must be grassroots with small community empowerment down to the family level. 

These are the basics.   The wisdom of decline is about a return to the basics with localism.  This theory is so simple it is beyond the reality of most who have been indoctrinated into believing globalism will advance.  This is a massive shift that is also dangerous and this is why the elites are doing everything they can to hide the reality of decline.  Their power is based upon advancing globalism.  The danger is uncontrollable collapse.  There is no guarantee this theory of parallel will work only that it is the better way forward.

In the theory of parallel the top needs to gate keep the security and basic welfare of these rural locals.  This does not mean a welfare state approach it means basic rule of law and free and fair markets kept local and without the digital networks that introduce unneeded complexity.  Most of all the state needs to get out of the way of these locals.  The state will do this because it will realize its end is not far off and it will be these back to the landers that are its lifeboats.

That in a nutshell is parallel and it is for you the individual to make your own arrangements once you understand the best way forward is not possible.  You have a decade to transform your local.  Get started now using globalism to leave it.  Get out of big cities.  If you are part of the administrative state find a new profession or at least do a parallel effort with your administrative state work and a hobby farm.  Small family farms orbiting small communities are the future.  Find one and contribute.

“Minsky moments are triggered by excessive financial leverage, and in the context of supply chains, leverage means excessive operating leverage: in Germany, $2 trillion of value added depends on $20 billion of gas from Russia… …that’s 100-times leverage – much more than Lehman’s.”

Zoltan Poszar

The green transition is dead.  The war in Ukraine laid that bare.  This is now a multipolar world and it is run on fossil energy.  Globalism is dead too and with it, affluence.

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 4^th 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.

I urge you to read this pivotal work by my good friend JJ at energyshifts.net.  This writing will be to some abstract and esoteric because it deals with the Mayan calendars and the process of decline the world appears to be in.  Below I highlight a point JJ mentioned on how the Maya embraced decline.  The cyclic shows life rhyming.   The Maya tapped into this insight.  This can help place you in our current process of decline.  All civilizations collpase.  The Maya show how to do it properly.

(2) The Cyclic Reordering of Civilizations

“Spiritual guide, Carlos Barrios, mentions in his book, The Book of Destiny [33], that the Classic Maya Empire was to an extent allowed to disintegrate consciously by consensus according to what the energies demanded of the people.  The reason was that the Mayas built their cities on intangible energy centers (spiritual energy points) and when the energy shifted they would relocate to new energy centers to create settlements there. Kenneth Johnson stated something similar in one of his books;  The Mayan world did not end when the cities of the Classic Period began to decline. It simply shifted gears; the locus of energy moved from the ancient capitals to new ones – Kenneth Johnston (The Mayan Prophecies: The Renewal of the World 2012 to 2072) [34].  These factors might shed some important light on the mystery of the ‘collapse’ of the Classic Maya because their empire declined over a long period of time [35]. The Mayas would likely have known that the cyclic reordering of their civilization was upon them, and they could, therefore, have oriented themselves accordingly.”

Life shows indications of being cyclic to those who appreciate the metaphysical.  The Maya studied this closely and developed an elaborate calendar system with corresponding mythology to describe these forces of life.  Science is preoccupied with reductionism which is only two dimensional.  The Mayan calendar system adds the third dimension of the metaphysical.  It is only with the combination of science and metaphysics that life can be understood properly.

I call this mix alchemy.  Alchemy is a living transmutation when the proper balance of the physical and metaphysical is achieved.  This is never fixed and always in flux so periods will be of growth and light but also decline and darkness.  This is the wisdom of ages.  You the individual can tap into this most elementary wisdom to guide your life through this time of decline.

In today’s world science is dominant.  Today the spirtual is at its lowest point and we are in the age of darkness.  Science has usurped the sacred.  It is now worshiped as a god.  If you can see this through the eyes of the Maya then you will understand why our world is now set to decline and disintegrate.  Our global empire of transhumanism is locked into this decline but you the individual can decline by consensus as Maya wisdom foretold.

The metaphysical is about connectivity so you the individual must boost your metaphysical appreciation.  Connectivity is what is lacking today.  The dualistic reality of humans who are self-conscious is both physical and metaphysical.  The Maya truly had a sense of the proper balance of these human conditions.  In this time of decline it would do man good to reflect on what the Maya understood.  This would give meaning to why civilizations and especially empires are meant to fail. 

The wisdom of the Maya saw that the cyclic demands decline as it allows growth.  This is the nature of things.  What you have in the wisdom of the Maya is two key points for current reflection, one is consensus of community and the other is respect for what the sacred demands.  This is wisdom in its most elegant form.  Embrace this personally and life will support you.  You will be on the right path.

“The Soviet operation at Korsun did not result in the collapse in the German front that the Soviet command had hoped for, it marked a significant deterioration in the strength available to the German army on that front, especially in heavy weaponry, nearly all of which was lost during the breakout. Through the rest of the war the Red Army would place large German forces in jeopardy, while the Germans were stretched thin and constantly attempting to extract themselves from one crisis to the next.” wiki

I do not speak about saving the world but instead I speak to you the individual about your safety.  I only speak to a few of you about what you can do.  I am honest in saying what I offer is limited to rural people with resources of time, money, and experience.  What I speak of applies to those who can find the right local and have the resources to fortify it. 

Finding the right place is the key and having the resources less important.  This was the case with the Germans that escaped the Korsun pocket.  They got out with their lives.  This will be a war for survival, maybe not with your life but with your way of life. 

This will primarily be a spirtual war because it will be an existential focus on how you find meaning to the disenfranchisements ahead.  Will you negotiate this decline in acceptance or bargain in denial that this time of crisis is not the time of a collapsing world order?

You can manage breakouts from what is going to be one crisis after another from here on out.  The war will be lost meaning every one of us will be poorer soon but you can win the battles in a retreat-in-force.  This is a journey of spirtual meaning which must be properly engaged because it is only with meaning you will find courage and it is courage that will see you through.

I rarely give specific predictions but I will now say boldly hold on to your seat going into 2023.  Nearly all the variables of systematic fracturing are present.  Food, water, and energy are dangerously affected.  With the abstract of the system that supports us we have economic decline, failing logistics, and dysfunctional government.  This will all combine in 2023 to create a firestorm. 

This will be a mosaic with different areas experiencing differing degrees of decline.  This is also not the end of it.  From here on out as was the case for the Wehrmacht on the eastern front in WWII, this time will be one retreat after another in the decline of the basic affluence that has driven average annual growth over the last 2 centuries. 

We are now positioned right on the tipping point heading into an age of decline.  2023 will be looked back on as the pivotal year.  2018 will be looked on as peak prosperity. 

The follow is from David Korowicz’s 2018 paper “Beyond Resilience”.  This is a foreboding look from the vantage point of the peak in 2018 for what is ahead and now apparent for 2023:

“…a failure of a global region or network of high centrality, such as the financial system, or global productivity (from a severe pandemic) can begin to shut down the global flow of goods and services.  In such cases the possibility of irreversible global systemic collapse increases.  In a high speed, Just-in-Time [JIT] economy, these processes can be very rapid.  As societies and economies move along paths that tend toward further economic growth and efficiency, and solve problems by adding further complexity, the vulnerability will increase…Finally, as it is the systems and networks we depend upon that are themselves undermining our dependencies, our trajectory is marked by systemic lock-in. That is, we are locked into crisis-inducing dynamics which we will be largely unable to change.  We should bear in mind that we did not design global civilisation, it self-organised. We do not understand it, except in parts; and we do not control it, except within niches. The more unstable the system becomes, and the more radical the surgery we wish to do to avert a crisis, the more we risk compromising the extant systems we depend upon.”

I would like to review for those of you who have the right stuff something I call green prepping.  There are a few of you out in this big world who will be the pioneers of a new narrative.  This narrative is common to us all from our collective past.  This narrative will be locally unique in character and spirit. 

This narrative will be a hybrid permaculture localism engaged in the simple but robust activity of gathering and harvesting biomass but within a decaying complex world.  You will manage this transformation as you adapt to a life of less affluence.  You will use affluence to leave it in a retreat-in-force.

This is about family, tribe (extended family and friends), and small community.  It is about a spirituality of community embracing our mother which is the land we inhabit.  It will sprout from places where niches of constructive growth will form in a system in destructive change.  You will be scaled properly to manage the destructive change ahead.  You will be the few but not the elite. 

This is not elitism because you will possess a humility of purpose.  Nature will support your humility because this is the way.  You will go forth on life’s behalf having become awakened.

It is now clear this global civilization is locked into a decline.  Green prepping is a hybridization of growth and degrowth for the individual to negotiate this decline.  It is about knowledge and wisdom of old but also new.  There will be attitudes of triage and salvage to sort through what is needed for your lifeboat. 

This is about crisis and sanctuary but not refuge.  Nobody is safe from the bottleneck ahead but there are those safer and you can be one of these brave souls.  You will protect you family and community with meaning because this is a spirtual war.

This narrative is about the physical world but connected to the metaphysical that has been so maligned by science and modernism.  This is about connectivity in a time of drift.  This may sound abstract but when you connect to the land in simple permaculture localism you open up the metaphysical world of meaning. 

This metaphysical world is a fractal expression of life itself that will be expressed through you.  It is here the power of life dwells.  This will be a journey on planet in decline with a civilization self-destructing. 

Your local scale will give you balance.  This will give you vision to know better how to live in a world where meaning is breaking down.  You will return to the basics of family, tribe, and community because history has shown us this is the best way for humans to survive decline.  You will depart the cities for places of refuge.  You will likely be near a city but far enough to manage the urban breakdown that is inevitable.

This narrative has two dimensions.  The first dimension is the metaphysical with spirtual permaculture.  The other dimension is with permaculture prepping.  It is the combination of these that make a homestead and monestary a hardened target to the decline process.  The situation we all are in is a building bottleneck.  This bottleneck is from a complex system breaking down. 

If you get preoccupied trying to understand this you will only get distracted.  If you accept that this is a lock-in to decline then mental energy can be directed to constructive action.  This is all about action because permaculture localism is a tough life as it always was and will now be again.  Learn your local history because what was once done on your land will be the marker for your journey. 

This journey is not a rejection of all that was learned from our departure into the hubris of modernism.  There are some very important truths to carry with you on the return to earlier ways of living.  Since this is a lifeboat there is only so much of this valuable modern knowledge you can put on your lifeboat.  This is where a deep wisdom is required that almost always will be about less things and knowledge in a world with too much of both.  This is about forced simplicity but leveraged with meaning.

Green prepping approaches this as a retreat-in-force.  This is a flexible retreat in the face of overwhelming forces of decline on all levels.  Green prepping seeks an aggressive motivation towards simplicity.  You will attack with more complexity at times to break out of the pocket you are locked into.  You will seek defensive simplicity in a world locked into a failing complexity. 

Simplicity is required for the decline process because the breakdown of a complex system is always about an existential simplification but since this is a time of complex systems, complexity will have to be in your tool box.  It is the proper mix of simplicity and complexity that is the key.  It is also critical you understand this is also the proper mix of your spirituality with the available science you will need to physically adapt. 

How you evaluate your local decline limitations is critical.  It takes meaning to see this but also skills to implement action.  I can only give you generalities because this is uniquely local in expression.  Your spirituality is unique and personal so all I can say is green it up and include prepping with your own personal journey of meaning.

This is about forced degrowth which means complex technology and networks will undergo abandonment.  This decline will hopefully be over time so do not panic.  There will be consequences with increasingly dysfunctional networks that you have come to rely on.  Understand the consequences so you can have a plan of action.  Widespread irrational behavior is a result of this breakdown.  This surreal condition will require a special focus to avoid the dangers of the many reefs that luck in the dark waters your lifeboat will be journeying on.

This breakdown will promote more irrational behavior and you will want to avoid these false promises.  This is a perfect storm of reinforcing bad behavior combined with forces of a system decline.  This is a convergence. This converging becomes a vortex of cascading problems forcing more bad behavior.  Looking at this in a simple way.   It advisable to stop digging when in a hole.  The key is to realize the hole you are in.  This is local so the nature of your trap will vary.

A retreat-in-force is a way of being ready to stand ground as needed to protect ones retreat into a defensive simplicity.  Simplicity is the only logical reaction to a complex system breaking down but this must be done realistically and relatively or else you just become part of the route of complexity.  Action is needed but measured action based on your limitations.  Know your limitations and be humble and accepting about this.

It must be recognized that the breakdown of a complex system frees up niches of growth that need to be aggressively embraced.  This means your homestead need to beef up its systems and supplies if you have a good local.  You will grow if possible, with growth that has value to oppose entropy in all its forms.  This mirrors the life system where niches are exploited by species when an ecosystem enters the succession of decline.

This retreat-in-force needs to also yield and retreat flexibly.   Utilize strength to slow and delay the effects of decline.  Decline will come at you from all angles.  To avoid becoming disoriented, you first need to embrace the process.  What this means is a proper dematerialization and decoupling but in a realistic and relative way.  The retreat is dictated by circumstances so voluntary simplicity is adapted.  This is an offensive simplicity.  Offensive simplicity means embracing simplicity as a goal with complexity when it fits.   The wisdom of insecurity will guide you with this.

This wisdom may appear convoluted but when you embrace the decline process with humility then you connect to the forces of the planet and life.  When you do this your spiritually will have a natural adaptation instinct that is supported by the force of change.  The planet and life system actually support you because you flow with its current instead of against the flow.  This is where denial and acceptance must be understood.  Those in denial will dig their hole deeper.  Those in acceptance will stop digging.

This effort becomes one of instinct removing some of the debilitating effects of fear.  Fear is healthy but the fear of fear is where action is diminished by loss of courage and clear thinking.  Panic never ends well so embracing insecurity is a must.  There is a wisdom to this that must become ingrained in your unique spirituality.  This is not about reinventing your existing spirituality it is about adaptation.

I would compare this to an offensive defense.  You may need to attack to gain a defensive position.  In green prepping this means even though you are green you will utilize the unsustainable resources of technology and fossil energy as needed to strengthen your efforts to go local and embrace permaculture. 

Here permaculture is defined as efforts to utilize local biomass in a simplicity relative and realistic to the nature of your local.  This is why postion is so important.  In war postion is essential.  This is a spirtual war as well as a physical one.  The attrition of entropic decay is unstoppable but can be slowed.  Positioning is all important.   

This means a retreat-in-force should include more advanced technology and fossil energy as needed and available.  This is done even though biomass and the appropriate technology of low or no tech is the goal.  Since we are in a technological fossil energy world, you will need to utilized them to leave them.  Technology and fossil energy value must be utilized but with a wisdom that balances the damage they do to resilience and sustainability. 

This is about understanding this is a Catch 22 but with options better or worse.  This effort is about triage, salvage, and hybridization of these seemingly incongruous juxtapositions.  This is an opportunistic effort where you seek a microclime of relative safety.  This means offensive action in a general retreat.

REAL Green is about relative and realistic efforts towards permaculture localism.  Growth is needed to degrowth.  This mirrors the ecosystem when in succession.  Species exploit niches where opportunities for growth are but this is done defensively because overall the system is decaying.   

Decay must be the operative quality to your wisdom.  Growth is needed to embrace degrowth.   The wisdom of this means a downsizing of potential.   Be very discriminating with any growth you choose.

This is an adapted simplicity because it is an adaptation with simplicity for a place a self-organizing complexity has put you.  Simply growth is easy.  Degrowth is not easy and will cause much dissonance.  This will be painful so have no illusions about the pain ahead. 

The current human narrative does not recognize this macro force of degrowth.  Even where limits to growth are acknowledged in our current narrative the solutions are a delusional hole digging effort at more complexity and resources.   Voluntary simplicity here is about acceptance of something not fully recognized nor accepted but well enough understood as a building failure of all the systems we rely on.

In some circles the opposite is being attempted to what I am recommending.  These are the disciples of the Great Reset.  These disciples are anti-life and will be eliminated by life’s forces but not before much collateral damage.  It will be these people you will want to avoid at all cost.  These are the radicals of the left that have embraced technocratic concentration of power with centralization of the destructive forces of humanism that are destroying our families and communities.

Modern greens might talk about degrowth but what they really want is more centralization and technology camouflaged as degrowth.  These are Marxist lies that are the technocratic urge to more control.   Unconsciously and in mass formation psychosis they are in denial of the decline process.  This is a scam-demic of one delusion after another.  This is the subterfuge of the elites for their own survival not yours.

The decline process requires acceptance and humility which is embracing the insecurity of decentralization.  The administrative state must be deconstructed not grown.  Cities must be depopulated not expanded.  Technology must be made appropriate not advanced into higher complexity.  All this is antithesis to the current narrative of the great reset the elites, technocrats, and radical foot soldiers of he left are embracing.

A wisdom of insecurity is needed to know what technology and knowledge to embrace and what to reject.  This can only be found locally with small communities, tribe, and family.  Currently the centralization of technocratic modernism in the great reset wants to eliminate the power of the people at the grass roots where people power is needed most.  It is here where proper adaptation is possible.  The top is completely lost in the urge to power that has always destroyed civilizations. 

Civilizations always trend towards empire.  This is a natural progression so the wisdom of insecurity accepts this instead of preaching utopian fixes.  Mankind is in a constant state of war because of our dualism.  This war is in our hearts too and comes from self-consciousness.  Grace is the peace offered to those who are meek.  Be a soldier but meek.

It is only through acceptance and humility that this existential war can be adapted to with finding value added growth increasing security.  This is a lock-in so there is no transcendence only an awakening that is transformative.  This is an embrace of a journey that is a lifeboat.   It is more importantly a hospice of acceptance of the mortality of it all.  It is only this aspect that will give courage in this time of loss.

I would recommend being prepped with energy, food, and water.  These needs means embracing consumerism and technology while you still can.  It is the proper embrace of these decaying resources that is key.  There is so much good stuff available these days that can make a homestead a hardened target.  Growth these items to degrowth in strength.  Degrowth is about retreat but adapt this as a retreat with strength.

The spirtual aspect of this retreat-in-force is embracing the planet.  It will lead you.  Being rural is the best way to discover this power.  Acceptance and humility have to be applied to everything you do.  You have a nature and nurture that patterns your meaning.   Everyone has a gut feeling for what is their truth.  This must be adapted to the planet and the web of life in the decline. 

Decreasing complexity is then embraced because this becomes your instinct to reality.  You will reality test with these attitudes.  The planet’s systems are in abrupt change and the web of life is in an extinction process.   The richness of species diversity is now a poverty of loss.  This is the keystone for what needs to adapt your spirituality.

In a commons sense way, you will need to beef up your spirtual meaning to maintain your dignity for the disenfranchisement ahead.  If you do not feel good about the tough actions you are taking you will not have courage.  Remember this is a war of attrition and entropy will win but how fast and how deep the decline has a huge impact.  This is about degree and duration and this is the gold standard for an individual or species ability to be resilient to a crisis.  Adapt degree and duration to be survivable.

The spiritually you will need is an existential incongruous juxtaposition.   A paradoxical consciousness to what is right is wrong and what is wrong is the new right.  This juxtaposition is not with universal morality.  This paradox is with the current human narrative of globalism that is in overshoot.  The consciousness of seeing through the narrative of what is considered the right way is what this embrace gives you.  This allows you to see over the hill for what is emerging but not yet realized. 

What this is about is an optimistic pessimism.  The optimism is in the journey but the destination is decline and loss.  Today there is the ingrained stress for an optimism of a manifest destiny of a human exceptionalism of greater affluence.  We commonly hear failure is not an option.  You see through this as bargaining with reality.   The proper action in the decline process is about a journey into crisis on a well thought out lifeboat. 

If there is optimism it is the courage and heroics that comes from meaning.  Meaning is greatly diminished being in denial.  This is the bargaining we do when caught up in the narrative of optimism.  This is negotiating in denial.  When this fails there is anger.  Anger is wasted energy.  Leap frog this directly into acceptance.

This is a journey that can only come from spirtual strength.  Tech and knowledge must be treated with wisdom.  Value embraced in regards to enhancing the journey.  Affluence is embraced only in regards to the journey to increased simplicity.  This is where the incongruous juxtaposition becomes apparent.  A surreal vision of the path forward means declining affluence is apparent so what affluence is available gets converted to beneficial growth into more simplicity.

I am posting this without comment.  What I did was take a David Korowicz’s 31-page White Paper and distill it down to 7 pages.  What I do recommend is you read the paper in its entirety if this is of interest to you.  This paper represents the best system science I have seen for the place we are at currently.  System science is the proper way to view these diverse macro impacts to your local life.  The importance of this view of current events is to place yourself within it.  Where are you in relation to a breakdown of this complex system?  This will not get you out of it but instead assist your mitigation of its effects.  It will help you determine what steps you can take.

This is real folks.  This is no longer me crying wolf about collpase.  There will be some kind of collpase that will self-organize into 2023 so at least have an understanding of the dynamics.  This paper is from 2018 and I would call it the review mirror.   2018 was the peak year of affluence.  It is now 2022 post pandemic with a financial, food, and energy crisis emerging.  Difficult weather will compound this.  I am now in a moderate drought I have not seen since 2013.  This current situation is compounded by a very dangerous proxy war in Ukraine.  If that was not enough there is an increasing possibility for a war over Taiwan.  If this Taiwan war occurs, I would say to you to hunker down immediately for very hard times ahead.

“Beyond Resilience: Global Systemic Risk, Systemic Failure, & Societal Responsiveness”

David Korowicz , Margaret Calantzopoulos 1 2

November 2018

https://389781d4-2000-4800-8ff2-c13e64a6aa0c.filesusr.com/ugd/94fdd9_d0ee5f5e0c264527ba423ad920a8bd5c.pdf?index=true

Axial Stress Phase

“The initial trigger could be a major pandemic, a financial system collapse, a cyber-attack on critical infrastructure, a natural disaster, a protracted environmental catastrophe, a socio-political crisis, or some confluence of stresses and shocks…There is a growing gap between the risk – understood as likelihood times impact – of catastrophic systemic failure in complex society, and societal understanding and preparedness…“Deepening Vulnerability: As the human systems that enable societal functioning (the grid, supply chains, the financial system, telecommunications, behavioral coordination) become ever more globalised, complex, inter-dependent and high-speed, our vulnerability to largescale systemic failure is increasing.”

Growing Drivers of Stress and Shocks

“We have now entered a period that we call an Axial Stress Phase, where societies globally are and will be increasingly exposed to major stressors linked to: resource constraints (e.g. food, oil, water), sink-related constraints (e.g. impacts of climate change, ecosystem collapses) and internal constraints (e.g. credit hyperextension, fraying socio-political trust, declining marginal returns to problem solving, war).”

Page 4

“there is growing recognition that those complex infrastructures and systems that sustain the normal operation of society, and which are highly resilient to small stresses and shocks, contain severe intrinsic vulnerabilities to large shocks. If the grid is incapacitated (due to a natural disaster or a cyber-attack); or the financial system fails (due to systemic banking collapse), the operations across the whole society can shut down…In a highly interdependent global system, shocks and stresses can propagate through supply chains, financial systems, communications and mass human movement. Further, a major global shock that impacts a region with high centrality – one that contains critical sustaining interdependencies with the rest of the world – can ignite destabilising global contagion.”

Page 5

“In a similar manner, a failure of a global region or network of high centrality, such as the financial system, or global productivity (from a severe pandemic) can begin to shut down the global flow of goods and services. In such cases the possibility of irreversible global systemic collapse increases. In a high speed, Just-in-Time [JIT] economy, these processes can be very rapid. As societies and economies move along paths that tend toward further economic growth and efficiency, and solve problems by adding further complexity, the vulnerability will increase.”

Page 6

“The first point here is that the interactions are heterogeneous – one cannot consider the impacts of the financial crisis, climate change, or distant state collapse in isolation because global socio-economic stability is increasingly interwoven. Secondly, stress and shocks are contributing to the generation of new stresses and uncertainties. For example: Brexit and the Trump phenomenon, trade wars, and increasing inter- and intra-state tensions. Thirdly, strained societies can lose resilience, and become more vulnerable to further crises.”

“Compounding events will become more common. For example, synchronous climatic stresses affecting global food supplies; rising socio-political and economic stress amplifying the impact of food price spikes; or a series of major hurricanes in high-centrality regions concurrent with a period of heightened financial tension – can have non-linear impacts – bigger than the sum of individual hazards alone. At the same time, declining resilience means that recovery from a localised systems failure is constrained, while impacts outside the affected region/ network become more susceptible to contagion. In such a context, the paths to global systemic instability and failure multiply, as the likelihood increases.”

“We have no experience of a large-scale systemic failure in a complex society to draw upon”

Page 7

THE TRANSFORMATION OF RISK

Globally Integrated Systemic Risk

“There is a growing recognition that the risk to human welfare and societal functioning is being transformed , . To understand the implications of this it is necessary to consider risk in 3 4 a holistic sense , . In this characterisation, we bring forth the concept of Globally Integrated 5 6 Systemic risk. It acknowledges the fact that dependencies are indeed globalised and constrained in structure and behaviour, and that a growing number of critical stresses will transmit and interact world-wide . As the system becomes more tightly integrated and 7 stressed, one can no longer deliberate over environmental and socio-economic crises – and specific solutions to them – in isolation, but must consider the emergent behaviour of the system as a whole. Its analytical methodology is rooted in the study of complex systems, and risk analysis. Such a perspective acknowledges collective system constraints, heterogeneity, feedback, path dependence, irreversibility, and the existence of tipping points. Siloed analysis and modelling, which represents the current way of apprehending the issues we face, remains blind to this transforming reality.  We have entered a period where the risks we face are becoming more extreme in their impacts, more probable in their likelihood, and potentially irreversible in their duration. This transformation arises from a convergence which can be broadly formulated as follows:”

Increasing Vulnerability

“Firstly, as the networks that maintain our welfare and the general coherence of civilisation grow in scale and become more integrated, complex, interdependent, delocalised, highspeed, synchronised and efficient vulnerability is increasing The tightening spatial and temporal correlation between the growing complexity of goods and services flowing through civilisation implies a declining volatility through global systems. Those include production processes, supply-chains; infrastructures; behavioural norms, institutional legitimacy, and trust. If interruptions to the flow of production were common, for example, due to political unrest, blackouts, flooding or storms, bank failure or wars, then such tight correlations would not have evolved. One of the defining characteristics of the process of civilisation is volatility suppression, see appendix I.”

Page 8

“More complexity and interdependence mean that a failure of one part of the system can cause disturbance and disruption in other vital parts and regions across the globe in a manner that may not be obvious. As global systems increase in speed, in the form of maintenance and input turnover times, financial flows, JIT logistics, and human movement – contagion processes can propagate rapidly through and across networks. Delocalisation means that, outside the vanishingly few actually self-sufficient pockets of the world, no country, critical infrastructure, business, community or person can control the conditions of their own operational persistence, and thus be truly resilient.”

“Like the homeostatic regulation of temperature in humans, complex society and its subsystems act to persist and stabilise in the face of stresses and shocks. But the bounds of resilience have narrowed as systemic volatility declined, making the system more brittle to the range, intensity and frequency larger shocks we can expect in a more systemically stressed world (see next section). The coherence and stability of society can be threatened when resilience is undermined, and a shock of sufficient scale hits a high-centrality part of a socio-economic network. In this case, a tipping point can be passed where the stabilising forces are over whelmed, and some contagion processes undermine critical inter-dependent systems in a reinforcing cycle of disintegration. It is the underlying level of complexity and interdependence that determines the collapse depth: it is the speed of civilisational processes that determines the collapse rate. And, it is the complexity, interdependence and scale of the affected region that largely delineates the scope for recovery/ non-recovery.”

“The result is a loss in complexity and the intermediating processes that sustain societal welfare in all its dimensions. It can also be considered as a step-change loss in the capacity to use energy and other resources. From the point of view of societal operations, it would represent a shut-down in the circulation of goods and services.”

Page 9

Axial Stressors

“Secondly, there is an array of increasingly pressing, large-scale drivers of stress and shocks that can test such vulnerabilities. These can be described as Axial Stressors since they are persistent and growing, they arise from the operation of civilisation itself and are critical to its operation and stability They include: a) declining marginal returns on the ecosystem-based inputs required to maintain and grow our civilisation – most pressingly: food, oil and water; b) the rising impacts of waste and ecosystem interference arising from it – most prominently climate change; and c) growing stress within the operation of civilisation – especially: credit hyperexpansion, declining marginal returns to complexity and problem solving, and fraying societal trust and cooperation. Collectively, these act to constrain economic activity, increase volatility, raise the cost of sustaining and maintaining existing systems, and make problem-solving more difficult .”

Emergent Interactions

“Thirdly is the emergent behavior of the growing Axial Stressors and their interactions through increasingly vulnerable global systems.  The fabric of conditions that maintain and coordinate the inputs required for societal function, and that is adaptive to the historical, volatility-suppressed period becomes itself a growing source of risk transmission. This is likely to manifest in growing economic, social and political tension, and an increase in the frequency, intensity, and duration of shocks, and compounding events. Many new pathways for stress and shocks are likely to appear, further increasing volatility and intrinsic uncertainty. Societies are likely to find that recovery to the historical trend is more difficult as heterogeneous and repeated shocks have evermore nonlinear impacts, while resilience is compromised. Instability is increasingly destabilising, while resilience and adaptive capacity are lost. Rising volatility, and an undermining of a systems capacity to recover from shocks (called critical slowing down) are common early-warning signals that a given configuration is becoming more susceptible to collapse .”

Systemic Lock-In

“Finally, as it is the systems and networks we depend upon that are themselves undermining our dependencies, our trajectory is marked by systemic lock-in. That is, we are locked into crisis-inducing dynamics which we will be largely unable to change.  We should bear in mind that we did not design global civilisation, it self-organised. We do not understand it, except in parts; and we do not control it, except within niches. The more unstable the system becomes, and the more radical the surgery we wish to do to avert a crisis, the more we risk compromising the extant systems we depend upon.”

Page 10

Historic Growth Phase

“This is the phase represented by the exponential growth, complexity, and integration of global civilisation, as represented in figure:1. While this phase always had periods of socioeconomic tensions, and some transmission of shocks, large-scale system integration was maintained, and recovery to trend assumed. The bounds of resilience of the system and its sub-systems was forged in this generally stabilising, low volatility period (appendix: 1).  This period shaped our assumptions of the world – from our expectation that we can buy food in the supermarket, and have sanitation and communications, to investments in renewable energy, pensions, critical infrastructure, and education. It also provided the analytical frameworks behind economic growth models (including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change projections). All take for granted the continuity of systems integration.”

Axial Stress Phase

“This phase, which we argue we have already entered, assumes that the general critical operations of civilisation – the flow of goods and services, critical infrastructures, and sociopolitical stability – are maintained at scale, even though there may be increasing localised disruptions and failures. However, emergent interactions increase the headwinds against economic growth and raise the costs of maintaining the status quo while generating new sources of risk and uncertainty. Populations, industries and countries are exposed to chronic economic, social and political stresses and supply/ demand shocks, supply chain disruptions, environmental crises, oil and food price volatility, recessions, debt defaults and migrant flows. Systems strive to adapt and absorb them. But the persistence of stressors and the rising frequency and scale of shocks makes reversion to trend progressively more difficult, with each new disruption having an increasingly non-linear impact. Net overall resilience and adaptive capacity declines.”

Broadly, in Axial Stress period one could anticipate:

“The divergence between historically adaptive expectations and the emerging realities to deepen. No government, no matter how selfless and astute, will be able to meet those expectations.  •Growing tension between the natural response of increasing tribalism (including inter and  intra-state conflict) and globalized interdependency, amplifying societal stress.  November, 2018 Page 10 of 31 11  •Social discount rates rise – which express itself as more trade-offs between the need to maintain immediate stability at the cost of undermining near-future stability.  •Cognitive and institutional paralysis and overload to intensify.  In such a context it becomes more and more difficult to mitigate stressors and build resilience at scale as the economic and social costs of maintaining stability rise, while capacities decline”

Page 11

Systemic Collapse Phase

“This phase is when the general critical operations of society are lost at a large scale. It is when system integration and synchronisation break down as critical inter-dependent subsystems fail, causing other subsystems to fail. The complexity, interdependence, process speed and delocalisation of current, habituated dependency mean such a breakdown can be rapid, deep and potentially irreversible. Localised failure is a feature of the Axial Stress Phase, where the outside region may have a significantly reduced capacity to respond and repair. It is nevertheless possible that with preparedness/contingency planning partial recovery or just amelioration of suffering becomes easier.”

“If the initially affected region (e.g., the United Kingdom, Germany, California) or network (e.g., global financial system, or a production shock from a severe global pandemic) is of high centrality, the suite of contagion processes can collapse the entire civilisation.  One potential driver of such a civilisational collapse event, though it may have a diversity of initial triggers, is a global financial collapse . Any credit-based system is inherently a call on 11 future productive capacity, and by implication, assumes the continuity of systems integration and the resource input flows that sustain it. The Axial Stressor-induced volatility and constraints on economic growth will have put continuing strain on an already over-extended financial system. In such a collapse, the suite of monetary system failure, collapsed banks, vanished credit and an inability to ascertain currencies value arrest commercial transactions. This cuts inputs into production processes. In an efficient, highly sophisticated, JIT economy, the loss of critical inputs rapidly cascades through the entirety of societal operations. The effort to re-establish some form of monetary system is undermined as production grinds to a halt, and the future becomes very uncertain – which is the ultimate backing for a currency. Some vital inputs might be commandeered or bartered, but given the current diversity of supporting flows necessary to maintain a society, infrastructure, factory or family, a systemic failure proceeds.”

“Once contagion processes are underway, the transition to a societal arrest can occur in a matter of days. Food, telecommunications, water, sanitation, healthcare, transport, emergency services and governance are severely impacted. Recovery is impossible because coherence has been lost, and societal concerns of necessity focus on survival and adaption. The impacts may include persistent critical infrastructure failure, significant disease and pandemic outbreaks, institutional paralysis, state failure, food shortages and famine.  The risks of famine can be intuited from the fact that in industrialized societies the supply of food from farm to warehouse to supermarket can rapidly vanish. Without a financial system and minimal transport, linking food from farms to urban populations is exceedingly hard. Moreover, without industrially produced seeds, fertiliser, pesticides, farm machinery, spare parts, fuels and irrigation – production can catastrophically fail. International food trade almost ceases as countries focus upon their citizens.”

Page 12

Divergent Localised Adaptation Phase

“The third stage is how different regions – shaped by varying geographical, social, economic and ecological histories – adapt to the enforced localisation and chronic emergencies. In time some international trade might pick up, and some regions stabilise at a much lower standard of living/ socio-economic complexity, but overall the situation remains severely trying. Most complex technologies are lost, including critical infrastructures, military systems, capacities to extract and refine oil, produce synthetic fertilisers, pharmaceuticals etc.  It is from this point that we confront the chasm between provisioning our basic needs (e.g. food, water, society) and our profound maladaptation to that task. It is also where we face the implications of our long-term undermining of ecological services that could be ignored as long as civilisational operations were maintained. This includes, for example, depleted soil, compromised bio-diversity and hydrological cycles. Moreover, we have to deal with the ongoing and growing implications of climate change even if the Systemic Collapse Phase has considerably reduced our capacity to emit greenhouse gasses. Our ability to adjust to the direct and indirect impacts is from a position with little adaptive capacity and persistent food insecurity, population decline, large population displacements, physical insecurity, and loss of collective intellectual capital. However, this does not mean that there would not be places and times that people are secure, content, adapting to new realities, and living meaningful lives. Localised outcomes over time become harder to assess as there is potentially a much greater range of conditions and responses with broader path dependency.”

Page 22

CONCLUSION

“We are blind to our dependencies, complacent of our vulnerabilities. Our temporal myopia has led us to assume a form of continuity based upon an extraordinary 250-year moment in human history. But the accelerating growth in societal complexity is imperiling the foundations of our welfare, while at the same time we confront growing stresses on multiple fronts. One outcome is that societies will have to face the growing possibility of large-scale systemic failures, from local and reversible, to global and irreversible.  There may be other possible futures. We are already overwhelmingly invested, materially, culturally, and emotionally in some variants of systemic continuity. It would surely be prudent given the transformation of risk that, as a society, we engage in some form of preparedness, as a form of insurance, given the scale of potential consequences.  It is in the nature of the transformation that the possibility of large-scale systemic failure can emerge with dis-orientating speed. Thus there is an urgency to begin to engage in societal preparedness. Not to avoid what might be inevitable, but to respond in ways that reduce suffering, and build upon what’s best in our human story.”

“The Fool arcanum represents a young enthusiastic man wearing luxury clothes, standing close to the edge of a cliff, with a dog that can represent our animal nature.  He does not seem bound to the limits of our terrestrial world, and his eyes are looking up to the divine and celestial planes, showing his aspiration to rise up spiritually even when you sometimes need to jump into the unknown. He is ready for it, because he is supported by his conviction that Divine Providence will help him to improve his human condition…The sun that shines behind him is meant to illuminate the path that should be taken, and protect him as he works towards his goals…Others see the Fool as the ultimate symbol of supreme initiation.  With this interpretation he is the true Initiate, reaching for Ultimate knowledge…is about to undergo deep spiritual changes, or is standing at the crossroads of something important in their life…The Fool will bring them into a world of spirituality, where they may find Knowledge out of most people’s reach. With this interpretation, the Fool symbolizes a need for freedom and independence. It indicates a positive evolution on a path of wisdom.”

We are at the precipice of an age tipping over.  We are at the pinnacle where an old world gives over to a new one.  This is with the physical knowledge of science but also the metaphysical of spirtual revelations.  It is those who can see this reality with these views together that realize we are at or near the precipice.

It is those who know this special knowledge that will submit to its requirements and go forth on its behalf.  This is life unfolding in a new way requiring a new approach that humans have not seen in a few thousand years.   There was an explosion of awareness in the last awakening of spirituality that brought the great religions and spiritualities of the antiquities.  This differs though in placement in a fundamentally different age but not in substance.

This age is not one of growth in a new age of stability that was to bring agriculture and industry.  This is the tipping over into an age where man is absorbed back into nature to assume a proper place that is now unbalanced.  In this process, us mere mortals who live very short lives will see a particularly disruptive period of turbulence like when the laminar flow of air on a wing is disrupted.  This can be a crash or a landing because in both instances turbulence is required or present.  A landing is actually a controlled crash and this represents an insight for what is ahead.

I am speaking in a holistic way of things but I speak to the individual.  I speak to very few of you.  Not many can see this place although if you study with honest science plus a spiritual approach with humility then this place is clear and vivid.  This calls for a new human type that will be molded out of this time of great change.  It will be those who like the fool embrace this time unconditionally seeking its support.

You will be supported if you respond to this call.  Nature knows this place.  Life has gone through bottlenecks before and its basic nature has adapted to these recurring times.  Conforming voluntarily to this reality results in divine providence.  Do not seek miracles but instead witness those already all around you.  Ecosystems break down and open up opportunity.  This opportunity is not obtained but instead offered to those who open up to this grace.

In a sense all knowledge that has come before will be of little use because this tipping over is other worldly.  This is not foreign but intimate and innate.  This is a getting back to who we really are.  There is an ultimate knowledge to this that requires a rejection of knowledge of the past.  This rejection is not in repudiation which is judgmental but instead a sacrifice like presented to Abraham.  It is the sheading of the constraints of previous knowledge to open up to a new way to a proper knowledge for what is ahead.

This is so simple because it is the basis of life on this planet.  The simplicity of it makes it beyond most because today’s knowledge is of the type that is based on power and gain.  This is about what knowledge that is required to make the spirtual leap into this new world.   This new world is the rebalancing of humans and their relationship to their planet and fellow life.  The simplicity of this is the returning to what our hunter gathers ancestors respected.  This is not a return to that time but instead a marker to how life must be approached ahead.

I speak to you the individual as a green shaman.  I speak about REAL Green.  This is a way to live for a some during this time.  I say some because increasingly people are urban.  REAL Green is about leaving that life so I am not qualified to speak to those seeking an urban version.  REAL Green is about depopulating cities not doubling down on them.  Cities are where this trap is the most difficult.  Cities are where affluence is perused most powerfully.  It is affluence that must be departed from so cities are the ultimate trap.

 REAL Green is not a refuge.  It won’t save you.  What it can offer is the strength to dance near this cliff.  If you have been awakened then you see the cliff.  Seeing the cliff, you can withdraw in fear or live with that fear.  This will be a very fearful time.  A wisdom of insecurity will guide you on this journey if you learn to live with fear.

This is about the journey into a new age with new skills that are old ones.  It is about a new spirituality that is a new and old one.  It is the blending of the amazing knowledge we have gathered over these many thousands of years.  It is the blending with the old ways that is the key to it.  It will be those who apply this blended wisdom that are able to journey best.  This wisdom is not tech based.  It is a spirtual knowledge that guides what science and tech to seek.  It will be about the triage of knowledge that can’t be taken on a life boat on a sea of change.

This is about a time of finding proper knowledge by eliminating the clutter as best one can in a realistic and relative way.  It is about knowing one’s limitations in acceptance and humility.  This act is required because modern knowledge is so powerful.  The knowledge you can tap into is more powerful.  It is what propels life.  The only way to tap into this is with humility.  This is the basic requirement of proper spirituality.

I have been talking very spirtual lately when the message of REAL Green is a practical.  REAL Green is a way of gathering and harvesting energy through biomass but also properly utilizing modern sources that are fossil and tech related.  The nature of this age requires both but the key is less modern and more of the old ways.  It is those who properly combine the two who will have a robust lifeboat. 

The way to do this is first spirtual.   This spirtual exercise will be the hardest of skills to acquire.  I am speaking spirtual lately because there is so much unfolding so quickly that it is required of me to speak of it.  Decades are unfolding in a short time indicating a shift is near.  This is like the pounding of the drums at a Native American dance.  It is a call to the immediacy of what is ahead.

It is very difficult to lower your affluence because it is our nature and the nature of this age to increase affluence.  This age has been characterized by competitive cooperation.  The cooperative has leveraged the competitive to become a golden age of affluence.  We have seen an age of conquest giving over to an attempt at global cooperation.  Unfortunately, this has seen the corruption of power and knowledge.  This is now destroying this age of affluence.  Your natural instinct is to have more affluence but what is needed is less but of the right kind.

To find the right kind is a spirtual skill to be learned but more importantly awakened to.  The awakening is looking to nature for how it does things.  This is a blending of awakened proper living with the many wonderful things created in this age.  Use the skills of homesteading and permaculture as your basic lifeboat.  Then look to the stars as earlier navigators did to chart your course.  This terrestrial navigation is really about orientation to the ways of nature that can only be fund through humility and acceptance in a properly scaled local way of life.  This is not messianic it is simple and ordinary.

This will be hard work physically and mentally.  It is about less physical and mental comforts but with resulting spirtual meaning.  It is this spirtual meaning that becomes the guiding principles of the palliative care of the hospice.  This hospice is a kind of explanation and expression of the destructive change of what is ahead.  It is a type of death but different than our mortal end.  It is the death of an age and way of life but one that may unfold for generations.  This may sound like a long time but a generation in human time is so little as to barely make a mark on an age.

If this is done properly then it is a type of waking up like the Buddhist realize from their meditations where they battle their frustrations.  It is the final letting go of the frustrations that is the key to moving forward in ease.  In a sense the demons become angels and then there is a moment of clarity.  This is the simplicity and complexity of what is ahead.  If you begin this journey, you will find meaning and it is meaning that has always been a requirement of being truly human.

In REAL Green I am very clear about what ought to be and what is.  It is my opinion “what ought to be” is a function of scale.  What I mean by this is the smaller the human scale the more likely “what ought to be” is realized.  “What is” then is more likley at greater scales where self-organization and path dependencies drive human behavior.  At global levels we are locked-in.  At local levels there is abundant opportunities to adapt.  This is a key point about the determinism and free-will of being saved.

Theoretically we could save the world.  The reason this won’t happen is human nature is out of scale.  Globalism does not scale for decline.  Globalist are pushing more of it not less.  The policies of the great reset are examples of the self-organization of corruption as power concentrates.  The mechanization of transhumanism and unsustainability of delocalization will increase the tension on a world in decline.

People don’t want to leave their homes and family.  Yet, cities must depopulate and that is where a majority of people live today.  Roughly 80% of Americans live in urban zones and 29% in rural.  This actually should be reversed.  This is a Catch-22 situation that can’t be sugar coated.  Urbanization equals affluence but when affluence hits diminishing returns then it destroys real affluence.  We are now at that tipping point.

Leadership today is mostly corrupt with moral hazard and priveldge.  There are actions that could be taken if we had proper leadership willing to sacrifice.   These actions would be more acceptable by the majority of people who will need to make a transition that is unfathomable.  The degree to which all people must change is beyond our mental preparation.  Leadership is needed to prep the masses.  This won’t happen because leadership is deceptively claiming it has policies offering more affluence.

This is on both sides of the political spectrum although the left is the most delusional with green new deals and social justice utopias.  I want to be clear, the brown fossil fuel world we grew up with has no future either.  Yet, it is the green utopias that represent the most dangerous policies.  I feel renewables are vital and I also believe conservation is a must.  What I do not agree with is an affluence that is now considered an entitlement can be expanded with these fake green polices. 

What is ahead is a decline process that can be adapted to better or worse.  There is no way to avoid pain and suffering with any policy.  It is my opinion that the coming drop in affluence is going to be so abrupt and dramatic that any and all energy systems need to be maintained.  Decay and abandonment will be systematic wide.  This is about survival not saving the world.  There are tipping points beyond which dangerous cascading failures are likely.  It will take everything we got to steer the ship away from these dangers.

I am a degrowther but not a typical one that you read about on green sites.  I do not speak of a steady state economy.  There is no steady state with a macro decline process.   At the very local level a steady state can be made more possible.  I do not put a happy face on degrowth like so many in green circles.  These “degrowth can save the world” notions are just more of the same dishonest science the greens have embraced.  Maybe since I was in business so many years, I have a skeptical and discriminatory view of things.  If it doesn’t add up, I don’t buy into it.  The something for nothing attitude and the get out of jail free card don’t work in a REAL Green world view.

There will be lots of collateral damage with needed lifestyle changes.  Net energy decline and resource depletion will strike equally across classes and ethnicities.  This will be the great equalizer.  The metaphysical aspects of dysfunction and the irrational will take its toll systematically with logistics and services.  Aspects of life you have come to expect and rely on will fail.  The grid is going to destabilize.  Electricity defines modernity so keep an eye on you grid condition to gauge your locals decline phase.

Who will be forced to make these sacrifices first is unclear?  If we are to save the world, some forced actions would have to be taken.  We would see whole regions forced to evacuate to more sustainable locations and lifestyles.  How this could be done in today’s political, social, and economic environment makes it near impossible to do proactively.  The top with its corrupt leadership and out of control administrative apparatus is incapable.  These forces are now parasitic.

The top leadership is currently acting parasitically without needed oversight.  The administrative state in government, academia, and health care has no interest in change.  Their bloated bureaucracy will prevent change or push the wrong kind.  They are now politicized to the point of being religious in their devotions.  These forces are the biggest impediment to change and ensure the top will be the obstacle to better adaption.  It could be different but this is now the reality of a global world in decline.

Eventually proper actions will be forced to occur locally which is the only place left for needed adaptation.  This will happen because this is where the buck stops.  The pain and suffering will be where needed change originates because this is the front lines of change.  Decentralization and empowerment are the name of the game going into destructive change.  If your local promotes these valuable attributes you are much more likley to survive this destructive process.

The world could be saved and we need to understand the how it could be even if it is not possible.  It would have to start sooner rather than later.  A coordinated effort would be commenced with locals and top leadership coordinating joint efforts.  Locals would be given much of the decision making with the top getting out of the way.   This decentralizing effort would need the top to enforce principles of confederation.  The top would be the gate keeper to maintain fairness. 

The key point to understand in this theoretical exercise is this is a door opened and then shut.  Once these actions start there is no turning back.  These actions will wreck the existing economy.  There is no certain result either.  Decline is a sudden and unpredictable whereas growth is incremental and stable.  These actions will eliminate 60% of the economy that is discretionary and related to modern affluence.  It is hard to imagine what changes that await because they are so many normal and everyday activities at risk.

It is important to understand this decline phase is not an option in any scenario.  This last turning of civilization has now started.  This is now self-organizing on a planet in abrupt change from human forcing.  Most of us don’t realize this in our daily lives because we are being slow boiled.  If we feel the pain of change it is not yet strong enough to warrant panic.

Our brightest minds are the most delusional.  Many of the brightest minds are still in denial and bargaining.  They know and acknowledge the warning signs of a coming bottleneck but they have attitudes of techno fixes that get in the way.  They have group think biases that prevent needed change.  Tough choices are avoided by these groups because they have no ovesight.  They are following bad policy because to deviate you get cancelled.

Scientist tend to be naïve about business.  They are bred to think theoretically.  Rarely do they take part in the commercialization of their experimental projects.  They just think them up and leave the application to the markets.  They have never handled logistics and dealt with risk.  They are far too specialized to deal with what is needed to decentralize.  Decentralization in decline means getting rid of science as we know it.  This is a big reason tough choices will be avoided by this group.

Government bureaucracy has grown dominant with constant growth of spending.  Once a program or agency is created it is rarely eliminated.  Bureaucracies have no interest in adaptive change.  They are entrenched in their walled fortresses.  This condition is now the biggest hurdle to the local.  If locals could be left alone vital adaptation is possible.  Locals need fairness and a degree of security and they can make big changes.  Sadly the top will be in the way of great opportunities.

Our brightest minds influencing those who lead are deep in self-deception.  Their livelihood now depends on this self-deception.  They are in fact more lost on the subject of decline than many who have good common sense.  If you talk to many less formally educated but more educated with experience, they have a better grip on what is needed. 

Specialization is clouding common sense.  Needed changes are simple which makes them very difficult in a world of specialization.  Less specialization is needed and this points to the path dependency trap the global is in.  At the local this will be an impediment to change for you.  The administrative state is going to be a source of problems for you.  This ought not be but unfortunately is.  Accept this with humility and you can find ways to maneuver.

The general public has been lied to and improperly educated for years now.  We have bred people to be consumers and seek affluence instead of sustainability and resilience.  Today it is even worse with woke safe spaces and the cult of victimhood.  These attitudes are not lifeboat attitudes.  Decline is about lifeboats of insecurity.  There will be no safe spaces at any level embrace this and you will find wisdom and strength.

This safe space mentality results in a mentality of transhumanism and delocalization that has trapped us in a system requiring ever more affluence.  The transhumanism of machines is generally looked to for solutions to problems.   Intead there needs to be less machines and technology.  There needs to be less delocalization of mobility.  Globalism is based upon transhumanism and delocalization.  These are the basis of affluence.  Affluence is in decline so adaptation means less globalism.

Mobility and digital capabilities now dominate our daily lives.  Few grow food and practice home economics.  Few know the basic skills of survival with hand tools.  Fewer still know how to utilize animal power.  Most are in unsupportable urban settings in jobs with no future.  If 60% of the economy needs to be phased out that leaves lots of people with nothing to do.  Keep in mind this condition will be forced on the world regardless.  If we are going to save the world it is how we adapt to this that is the key ingredient.

We are now on the fence of change with one foot in what will be the old world of modernity and one in the new world of what was once considered old.  Many in green delusions see techno marvels of artificial intelligence and green energy on the horizon.  The car culture will be made electric and our food grown with greater science and industry just greener. 

The old ways that will be the future ways are looked down upon as inefficient and brutish.  They are less efficient and more painful and this is what is needed.  Efficiency has hit diminishing returns too.  It is now the problem.  Less efficiency but more resilience is the name of the game.  This means not upgrading but instead mothballing and salvaging.

Most techno marvels will end quickly with cascading decline because they rely on a dangerously unstable grid and supply chains.  The economies of scale needed to make modern marvels affordable is likewise unsustainable in net energy decline and resource depletion.  What can be saved is now vital.  There are a lot of very valuable tech that needs to be saved to buffer the ride down.

I know how to save the world theoretically.  This story should be told to know why it can’t be done.  We should know what is needed so we will not make the situation worse.  At this point the wrong actions will have disproportionately negative results.  If we can expose flawed policy then less pain and suffering is possible.  Yet, a certain amount of humility and acceptance is required because so much damage will be done by a train wreck of path dependencies.  This is why it is only theoretical the world can be saved.

The great reset is an example of the worst possible leadership.  Technocratic centralization with more transhumanism is the absolute wrong approach.  This is what global leadership is pushing.  The Chinese CCP is also on this track with its own version.  This is converging into a competitive race.  If this race goes kinetic, we can expect the worst possible outcomes.

Consider a world with altruistic leadership and a properly educated populous in a concerted effort. Actions could be initiated to make the descent to a lower level of stability more likely.  What needs to be done is a hybridization of maintaining a reduce level of existing global structures that support vital systems.  Economic resources are vital to constructive growth in a downsizing of civilization.  This is a must because demographics are going to be reversed and this needs adaption.  Adaptation takes resources physical and metaphysical. 

Depopulating cities into rural areas where localism and permaculture will be the new way of life requires investment.  New infrastructure and tools are needed.  Education is a vital element of this reorientation of daily life.  Education costs money.  Moving people involves machines so transhumanism and delocalization mut be maintained.  Yet these actions ae being done to leave that world.  The car culture can’t be ended without preparations like animals and localism.

Cities must be maintained to be depopulated.  Vital industry kept going to supply necessities to end them.  Industrial agriculture must be maintained until enough people can be moved back to the land.  There is no way permaculture localism can feed the world as-is with 7BIL people.  It can support 1-2BIL.  Populations must come down quickly but understanding families must grow in size. This is the complexity of the paradoxes of decline. 

This back to the land paradigm would ideally be done initially with volunteerism.  People would be educated on the merits of voluntary simplicity.  They would leave the cities into a life much more difficult and rigorous because this is what is required for survival.  This is not a safe space refuge but a move into a hard life this is more sustainable.  Meaning must be created for why this must be done to get people to embrace this needed change.

Leadership would lead the way in sacrifice.  They would do what is needed to see this transition through by being at the front lines.  They would not enjoy the perks of priveldge.  Their mansions and toys would be discarded.  They would live by a Spartan code of honor and duty.  They would lead by example by making big sacrifices that all would see.  Sacrifice is a vital aspect of this project of hope. 

Unless people see common sacrifice, this project of hope will not work.  This is why it won’t work.  Without leadership this process will be haphazard.  There will be locals that can transition better but the world will not be saved.  Many people are going to die and be disenfranchised into a difficult existence.  This reality does not need to be as bad.  Any scenario will be bad but the current trend is much worse.

These theoretical efforts would start with the low hanging fruit that is still everywhere.  People that would want to go rural in permaculture localism need to be supported.  They would be the train blazers.  This would be family units because it is family, tribe, and small community that is the key to success.  In this theoretical world, families will need to grow and genders assume their traditional roles.  Kids will have to work and be educated at the same time.  Education would be k-8.  There is no room for the universities system we know today.  Their knowledge factories are producing the wrong knowledge.

There will be little time for modern recreation in this world.  Recreation will return to what it once was.  Before the industrial era it centered around simple activities like food and drink.  People remained local and did not take vacations.  Their activities were social with community.  The individual thrills possible these days must end.  This recreation will be low energy and low tech.

These initial pioneers will go seasonal and embrace intermitency.  This means altered food choices and daily lifestyles.  Electricity will be rationed.  Lights will be out early.  Food will be eaten according to the seasons.  Preparations will be made to preserve the harvest for later use.  There will be daily chores that are mundane and repetitive.  Water and food will be the primary focus.  If this sounds third world that is because it is.  It is the degree to which we can apply knowledge and appropriate tech to being third world this is the key.

Leisure will be altered greatly.  People will gather in their churches and community for enjoyments.  Hand tools will entertain us.  Simple get togethers will replace the isolation of the modern era.  Leisure will be merged with work for example with food preservation.  One need only look to the past with how this was done as little as a century ago in the majority of the world.

Initially these people will be offered security and the basics of health care.  They will have to build on their own local safety nets to make up for the deterioration of state safety nets.  Through education this will be understood because centralized safety nets will not be supportable.  City dwellers will recognize the same because cities will shrink and with that shrinkage so will their safety nets.  The old and the young will again live together under the same roof.  Old folks’ homes will not be possible.

The most difficult aspect of this theoretical transition is the dismantling but also the maintenance of the negative consequence of modern life.  Nuclear industry will have to be properly mothballed but at the same time it is maintained.  In the beginning all energy sources will be needed.  Dangerous industrial systems will pose a threat to many rural areas so this effort will have a high priority but with less resources.  This effort will dovetail with the downsizing of urban areas and supply chains.  This is why this is an end game of modern civilization.  Once these systems are turned off there is no going back.

The vast amounts of weapons will need to be properly disposed of.  Armies will need to be repurposed for this effort.  Cooperation among nations agreed to with the understanding good fences mean good neighbors.  External migration will have to be halted to allow internal migrations.  Proper change can’t be managed unless borders are maintained.  The internal chaos will be bad enough.  Uncontrolled external migration will leave regions in worse shape.  Globalist of the great reset are promoting the opposite now which is a prescription for chaos.

The world will be returning to one made by hand.  Animals will become part of our lives.  Transport and heavy labor will return.  There can still be appropriate tech and vital knowledge from the modern era maintained.  A wisdom of the lifeboat will be applied to determine what to save.  Knowledge will be triaged out that will not serve the purpose of this new world.  Material things will likewise be triaged out of this world made by hand. 

Anything getting in the way of change will be eliminated.  This is a cancel culture but one based upon the reality of the decline in affluence not the desire to increased affluence and safety.  The key to this is the process of change does the cancelling not thinktanks and government.  This means leadership must have clear view that decline is ahead not more affluence.  This is the lifeboat and hospice mentality that would be needed at the top but is not likley to be found until it is too late.

Spiritualism will be promoted.  It is going to take meaning to power through these sacrifices.  The human narrative will be altered dramatically seeking many more metaphysical aspects.  Materialism will be altered to focus on respect and care for vital materials.  Modern profit motives reduced but not eliminated.  The concept of real value must be maintained.  Price discovery can’t be discarded because it is the best determiner of value.  Yet, a collectivism of wisdom will maintain the public trust over private profit.  Barter and the gift economy will be allowed to flourish because these work at the local level.

This story I told you is one of fantasy but one that should be reflected on.  If we the people in a world in decline can be steered more in this direction then less pain and suffering is likely.  This general blueprint can be used locally if this story is understood.  These basics of decline and voluntary simplicity will scale locally.  The global is lost but not the local.

It is vital that awakened groups start the transition immediately.  Denial and bargaining will only make the transition harder.  These pioneers will be the seeds and incubators of the future.  Others will follow the trails they blaze.  They will do the recon and the prepping of the battlefield for the war against entropic decay.  The difficult trial and error can be done by them first.

You the individual can do this in your life relatively and realistically.  You can go permaculture in localism as much as you can.  You can at least understand what has no future and where the future awaits.  Permaculture localism must be the focus of your higher power principles.  Adapt your spirituality accordingly.  This will be a spirtual war of what meaning is right.  Permaculture localism is that meaning.

It is possible the end of the modern world will come suddenly and violently.  It is more likely it will be a mosaic of events and processes.  It will be a local affair with regional expressions.  You can manage better or worse by positioning towards the local and away from the global.  Heroics will be called for.  Heroics is possible in properly positioned locals.

The awakened will live the wisdom of insecurity which is a pessimistic optimism of the hospice.  Difficult times will be embraced and a palliative care administered for the vulnerable and needy.  The awakened will be much more able to act heroically and selflessly in the local.  This will be what it takes to save your local.  The result will be a new spiritualism of constructive change within a world accepted to be in destructive decline.

This world is coming and it will be forced on all.  It will be the degree to which people properly adapt that will dictate how many survive.  The longer this transition is delayed the worse it will be to navigate.  The more people that embrace the false prophets of the great reset the worse the damage to an already monumental effort needed.

Understand that this is a local project and, in some cases, regional.  Reflect on what could be if the global project would embrace efforts at a common decline.  Since the global effort will fall into competitive conflict reflect on the degree to which your local is at risk.  Scale accordingly to yield to these forces.  In some cases, set up defenses to the efforts of centralized control.  These forces that will confront you will have so many challenges they will tend to avoid fortified locations.

This starts in your own backyard with you and your family.  Your tribe and community will come together in common necessity at some point.  It is those tribes and communities that see this tend first that will do better.  Seek out proper community.  Find a good local if you can before the rush.  The basics of survival are simple.  Simple as in easy to understand and also simple in application.  The hard part is believing in these simple actions when so much marketing is promoting the opposite.

This is a world made by hand and a world of family.  It is only through family these hard choices will be made properly.  Families that work together as tribes will leverage the strength of the family.  Confederations of tribes in small communities will be where the real success is.

My REAL Green is dedicated to the concept of lifeboats and hospices.  REAL Green is focused on rural and middle-class scenarios of my life but the key concepts scale to others unique locals.  Apply these key concepts to your local. 

I am not the one to judge your unique expressions.  There will be plenty of judgment from the decline process itself.  The process will not care about excuses.  It will reward humility and acceptance.  Spartan and ascetic lifestyles are a must.  Most of all an attitude that looks to the nature of life instead of the arrogance of humanism is required.

REAL Green focuses on the individual.  The message is not meant to be a movement.  This message is for a handful of readers who visit this obscure blog.  Those who understand REAL Green action will have an oversized impact on those places that have the right stuff to survive the coming bottleneck.  This will unfold over years and days.  This will be a mosaic of events and processes.

The complexity and complicated structures of the individual’s world in decline are now self-organizing and adapting negatively.  These forces are converging and reinforcing.  Forces of decline are abandonment, dysfunction, and irrational.  These forces occur suddenly in break-outs but also slow attrition.  This is in contrast to the slow incremental building of growth our grandfathers knew.  For you the individual in the dawning of a new age this means your previous experience and education must be altered.

The mental pattern of bargaining is entrenched at the public level.  Optimist both green and brown are stuck in bargaining because of the arrogance of humanism.  Leaders don’t become leaders without this collective trait of arrogance.  This condition is in fact now breeding psychopathic behavior among the elites who run the world.  The administrative state, global technocratic think tanks, and transnational corporations are increasing human arrogance when the opposite is needed.

Prosperity has been promised in so many forms for so long people default to those who promise the most.  Promises eventually become untenable entitlements.  Economically they become unfunded liabilities.  If people really understood he truth that prosperity is over and has been over they would live differently.  Living differently would crash the system of growth. 

This is not only a camouflaged catch-22 for humans but also an unfolding planetary tragedy.  Anti-life forces are in full force.  This is the time of maximum darkness for the planet yet humankind thinks we are at the greatest point in our history with knowledge and tech.  This is actually the dawning of the bottleneck period where stability and growth turn to vicious decline and reorientation.

This dangerous period of unkeepable promises that have become entitlements means you the individual need to view life differently for your survival.  Now that prosperity has tipped over into decline there will be dangerous resentment.  If you are elite, I would be very worried because you have a long way to fall with many people eying your priveldge.  If you insecurely living a wealthy life, I would be worried.  Most people are going to get a 40% haircut. 

This current inflation and deflation combination is stagflation.  This is not transitory and will only increase.  This is systematic and will converge and reinforce decline.  This decline will be a mosaic with a variety of outcomes.  Some places will collpase while others will see slower decline.  There are places where constructive growth and relative refuge are possible.  This is REAL Green.  Find the right people and place and you will find a refuge of sorts.

My life is a REAL Green experimentation.  I am walking the walk.   I am telling you the story.  I am talking to very few of you mainly because my message of doom does not sell.  For most it is like the occasional porn viewing.  What I am talking about will not be a movement.  It is not practical for urbanites and much of the world population is increasingly urban and centralized. 

REAL Green is a decentralized mentality but with a strategy of parasitically feeding off centralized wealth to decline in place in a local with a future.  A proper spirituality allows this because it is attitudes and mentality that drive constructive growth in a refuge microclime.  The world will be collapsing all around you.  Your refuge will be affected too but your attitudes and mentality will allow meaning and dignity.  This is the hospice of REAL Green.  The lifeboat is your homestead.  Your monestary is where meaning is cultivated.

REAL Green is highly mental with adaptive.  Adaptations concern attitudes and spirtual orientation.  Once your mental framework is in the adaption mode for a decline process then you can focus on the physical realities of decline which put simply is less physical affluence.  This is very hard to do.  I say that because I am trying to do it and I hit road blocks at every turn.

Doom is effectively a pariah concept that society avoids on all levels.  If you focus on doom you are going against the narrative but paradoxically you are flowing with the current of life.  Life is now in a period of destructive change in a succession of complexity.  Human growth caused this with a forcing of anti-life activities.  Monocultures, forever chemicals, and excessive waste streams have ended the stable Holocene.  This is now the destructive Anthropocene.

I constantly talk about a mentality of relative and realistic because the Anthropocene is an age of duplicity.  Humans are tracking in one direction and the planet and life in another.  REAL Green attempts to navigate both worlds realistically and relatively based upon your local of people and place.  It is here where meaning is because it is here humans scale.  When scaled properly there is more balance.

This adaptive mentality must be tied to your local of people and place.  How much you can change your people and place is your envelope of adaptation.  This is a keystone attitude because one of the most important criteria for the success of an individual is knowing local limitations.  Your limitations are a moving target because of outside forces.  You may be completely dedicated to change but your people and place are not.  This requires throttling to get it right.  Overdoing adaption is as bad as not doing anything.

I have succeeded over many years in moving from elite status to solidly middle class.  This is harder than you think because family and tribe have roles for you.  My definition of tribe is extended family, friends, and other relationships.  I am now to the point where I should move from middle class to lower middle class but I have not made that move.  I am mentally ready for it.  I think about this daily.  It is coming because all you need to do is be honest about science and economics to see that basics of prosperity will be over soon. 

My approach is I am going to enjoy good foods, clothing, and products while I can.  I know it will end but I will feed off this system intelligently while I can.  This is the terminal illness of the hospice.  A person’s last months in a hospice should focus on quality of life with acceptance of the end.  The key ingredient is lifestyle adaption.  I am still enjoying items of prosperity but recognizing it will end soon.  This mentality is like a daily prayer. 

Attitudes address this but also changed lifestyle.  Attitudes of simplicity and Spartan living are a must.  A permaculture lifestyle is the basics.  Much of what I have done is efficiency related and prepping.  I have embraced the spirituality of Green.  This spirituality is simply taking your existing spirituality and greening it up with permaculture localism. 

In my case it is local biomass and animals.  Goat and cattle graze polyculture pastures.  I harvest hay and firewood.  I also have a garden, orchard, and grapes.  I have done environmental restoration that means for a time at least there is lots of forage and game to harvest.  This is the simplicity of permaculture for my place.  I keep it local and low on fossil fuel inputs. 

I have stocked up on essentials but they will run out over time.  I have rationalized my equipment by eliminating machines and getting smaller.  Equipment wears out and is lost to accidents so this is my envelope.  Without resupply your prepped homestead will suffer entropic decay over time.  Less equipment and more human labor is a proper consideration.  One of my biggest deficiencies is no animal labor and not enough human labor.  These are my limitations.

I am a one-man operation but with help from my wife and two 14 year-olds.  Without fossil fuels my operations stops.  I know what animals and equipment I need but economics and time needed prevent change.  I have downsized as much as I can with equipment.  A mule team is needed but there is no way I can fit that into what I do.  I am hoping my young boys will embrace my farming system at least part time. 

The younger generation is the future.  The future is larger families despite current demographics.  The future of women is keeping house and providing for the family.  Men will be in the fields and doing manual labor.  Look to the 19^th century for a feel of what is ahead.

Health deteriorates too meaning downsizing into a more labor-intensive life is more wear and tear.  At 60 my back and joints are now problematic.  I power through this but for how long?  When I hit 70, I doubt I will be able to do what I do.  If I can’t get my kids on board then this farm stops.  This is the sad reality of decline for me.  But I reflect on this as a journey.  I live day by day.

For me the most important variable to this whole process of decline is attitudes.  You must embrace the idea of insecurity and depravations.  What this means is living them in your life even if there is no immediate crisis.  There is a building crisis that we are being slow boiled into.  You need to have the mentality of adapting to adapt.  I have a good life that is tough but rewarding.  My biggest effort is not the back breaking work and redundancy of low value tasks but the attitude that more painful adaption is ahead.  I think about sacrifices with everything I do.

This is why I spend so much time on the spirtual side of REAL Green which I call spirtual permaculture.  The key aspect of REAL Green is getting tough spiritually for decline.  You need to reach the edges of your envelope and try to stay there.  You need to dwell on the cliff and be ready to jump off into a world that despite the preparations you are not prepared for.  When you jump and or are pushed, the outcome is unclear.  It does not matter how prepared you are for this jump.  Fate will dictate a result beyond your input.

If you embrace a spirtual permaculture you will be cultivating acceptance strategies that are basically getting out of a holistic denial of decline.  I say holistic because decline is physical and metaphysical.  The physical is characterized by abandonment.  The abstract is where dysfunction and irrational come into play.  Finding ways to adapt to forces of decline means acceptance is a keystone effort.  This is 80% attitude once you get the basics of green prepping mastered.

The key to green prepping and spirtual permaculture is embracing nature because if you do nature will assist you.  Nature has already figured out the rat race.  Humans have arrogantly deluded themselves over the ages that we can do it better through knowledge and technology.  This has resulted in an evolution of a human system that is steadily less resilient with brittle sustainability.   The drift into increasing prosperity has been relentless and is likely now a dead end evolutionary strategy

Embracing nature means being more natural.  This means seasonal and symbiotic.  It means rural and local.  If you are urban then my message is only partially useful.  The degree to which you are urban and mobile is a good gauge for you risk level.  Most cities larger than 20,000 have little resilience to decline shocks.  Many of these cities are not position properly near food, water, and energy.   Longer term sustainability means less globalism. 

REAL Green finds the macro narrative a lost cause.  Don’t embrace messages of false hope.  This does not mean ignore your globalized world.  You can’t ignore the macro.  A key aspect of REAL Green is prepping with security for the effects of a declining globalized world.  Yielding strategies are foremost but positioning is important too.  Be less of a target but also position with groups for common defense.  You will have no choice but to reflect globally and support a political cause otherwise you will be at risk of being swept away individually.  The key to politics is localism.  The current system is broken but you still need to influence how it unwinds in relation to your local.

A key element of REAL Green is using this dying system to leave it.  You are relying on the ecological principal of niche growth within a system in decline.  Niches are freed up when a complex system breaks down.  You take your prepped local boosted by proper attitudes and a robust spirituality and become a force of adaptation.  This is swimming with the current of life mentality and physcally.  Life is in decline so you embrace decline.  You are swimming against the civilization current so right is wrong and wrong is right in this regard.  Civilization is in a linear urge to manifest destiny.  This is suicide.

This start with downsizing but more accurately downsizing with dignity of meaning.  Downsizing is a retreat action.  Downsizing with dignity is a retreat in force.  You accept the war is lost but you will lose slower.  Entropic decline of a system breaking down will win this war until humanity settles to a proper level of stasis.  The reason I say embrace nature is because nature has perfected how to battle entropic decay.  You can’t top nature’s nature for this.

Human civilization is declining on all levels.  This has forced planetary systems into flux from the stability that gave life so much complexity in the Holocene.  The web of life is declining with lower diversity thereby reducing common support.  The best you can do is postion properly but this first means acceptance of decline.  Once acceptance is embraced it is then a strategy for engineering of a different life system.

I am including two articles for your review.  I abbreviated them so you get the main points I want to stress.  I am increasingly finding my REAL Green positions proving out with the point of view of others.  These may be obscure and not mainstream but I find these obscure and alternative writers are the most honest. 

This dovetailing supports my view I am on the right track.  I have been doing this for years and going against the grain with talk of decline.  I started in earnest in 2000.  Even before 2000 I took interest in the diverse science of decline.  This has been academic but also a way of life.  I am a homesteader and naturalist but with a green prepping twist.

All those years of crying wolf and now here we are in this scary world I have been describing.  This is not vindication because that is not what acceptance is about.  This is about the journey not the destination.  I have explored, experimented, and created through this process.  This process is learning and coming to know the truth.  This is in my view is the higher value of being human.  I feel nearer the sacred with this mentality.

I call this life boats and hospices because the effort is physical and metaphysical.  I also speak of homestead and monestary.  I am talking about embracing nature and prepositioning for the trip down.  I speak of a monestary because once your life boat is outfitted you need morale to face the coming storm.  The monestary contains the art and meaning for the why.  The why is your higher power principal.  Combine these two and you will be a force of change.

https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/2022/06/15/232-all-crises-great-and-small/

“But it’s equally important that we understand the inner nature of a rapidly-unfolding crisis situation.  Prosperity is heading downwards, hardship is being worsened by the rising costs of necessities, and these material trends are invalidating two assumptions on which decision-makers have hitherto relied.”

“One of these failing assumptions, of course, is that we can deliver ‘happy outcomes’ using fiscal, credit and monetary gimmickry.  The other is the assumption that an economic consensus, generally labelled ‘liberal’, can prevail, by some kind of triumph of hope over reality.”

“On the basis of this useful discipline, our first point needs to be that prior growth in material prosperity has gone into reverse.  Our second is that systems – including the financial and the political – have been built on the contrary assumption of ‘growth in perpetuity’.  Our third is that this inherent contradiction is not understood.”

“Together, these points explain why we face crises of adjustment.  We have to adjust our financial system to a post-growth reality, and adjust our political systems to a situation in which it’s no longer enough to offer the public “jam tomorrow”, telling people that they’ll all be better off in the future if they just ‘keep the faith’ in the present orthodoxy.”

“First, discretionary contraction isn’t pleasant, particularly for anyone who’s been told that discretionary prosperity is supposed to carry on increasing over time.  Trying, both individually and collectively, to buck this trend – to increase discretionary consumption, even though discretionary prosperity is decreasing – worsens indebtedness, simultaneously exacerbating insecurity, and breeding discontent wherever it appears that a favoured minority is enjoying increased discretionary prosperity.”

“Promises can turn pretty quickly into expectations, and expectations into feelings of entitlement. The failure of promises, the disappointment of expectations and the denial of supposed entitlements can lead directly to resentment.”

“Depending on how you define “essential” – which varies both geographically and over time – roughly 60% of economic activity in the modern Western economy is discretionary.  This means that about 60% (and probably more) of equity valuation, and of loans outstanding, is dependent on positive futurity as it affects discretionary prospects.  In other words, if the consensus expectation of discretionary expansion were to turn instead into a realization of discretionary contraction, the financial system would face pressures which have no precedent in the industrial era.”

“In government, the equivalent of futurity is expectation, which means that people expect – and have been led to expect – a continuous improvement in their material circumstances over time.  Economic ‘liberalism’ is particularly at risk because it is based on a claim, which might otherwise be called a promise, that the prosperity being enjoyed by the more fortunate in the present will, in the course of time, come to be enjoyed by everyone else as well.”

The Degrowth conundrum

“My reading indicates that there has been little or no thinking about transition strategy, apart from that of the Green New Dealers and the Socialists, (…both of whom get it wrong; see below.) There has been considerable discussion within the Degrowth literature of what might appear to be strategy, but this is only discussion about goals. For instance various Degrowth (and GND) advocates call for things like fairer taxes, limiting inequality and implementing cap and trade systems. These (admirable) demands are in fact policies, statements of goals, not strategies for achieving goals.”

“But my main point here is not the neglect of the strategy issue, it is the total failure to grasp the magnitude of the degrowth required. I have gone into this in numerical detail in my paper “Degrowth; How much is needed?”. It derives the conclusion that present rich world levels of production, consumption resource use and GDP per capita must be reduced by up to 90% before a sustainable and just world could become achievable.”

“Typical GND proposals are utterly incapable of doing anything like this. They assume that the reductions needed are far less than this and can be achieved by reforms to/within/by consumer-capitalist society, mainly achieved by technical advances, more recycling and efficiency improvements.  This “tech-fix faith has now been demolished by massive recent review studies such as by Hickel and Kallis, Parrique (… reviewing around 300 studies), and Haberl et al. ( … reviewing around 800.) These conclude that decoupling is not being achieved and is not at all likely to be. In some limited areas reductions can be made but in general if GDP increases so do resource and ecological impacts.”

“Significant Degrowth, beyond the relatively small amount that can be achieved by tech-fixes, means eliminating a great deal of productive capacity.  Degrowth of the magnitude argued for above means phasing out, writing off, scrapping, most of the present amount of factories, corporations, trade, investment, industry, financing, and profit-making. It is about ceasing, eliminating, most of the producing and consuming going on. How on earth could this be done? That’s the Degrowth conundrum.”

“In the article “Simpler Way transition theory” I explain how it can be done, and the only way it can be done. The task is to enable people who presently have to produce and consume a lot to live satisfactorily, to transition to lifestyles and systems in which they do not have to. The Simpler Way makes that possible and it is the only way it is possible.”

“The claim here is that there is only one general form of society that can enable a high quality of life on extremely low levels of resource throughput. The core elements in this Simpler Way must be mostly small, highly self-sufficient and self-governing predominantly collectivist communities in control of their local needs-driven economies and willingly committed to far simpler lifestyles and systems.  The Alternative provides the detail, including provision for socially-desirable high tech, the elimination of unemployment, and the securing of a high quality of life for all.”

“It can be the same with respect to many other goods and services, including almost all other food items, dwelling construction, clothing supply, welfare and education provision, and especially for abundant and resource-cheap leisure and  entertainment.”

“These Simpler Way communities cannot be established or run by governments. Their crucial ingredient is a mentality, a culture prioritising self-sufficiency, localism, global awareness, community autonomy and self-government, cooperation and above all desire to live in materially simpler lifestyles and systems. These communities must be highly autonomous (within national guidelines and laws). They can only function well if run by conscientious, socially responsible happy citizens who derive life satisfaction from non-material pursuits. The state cannot give or enforce the conditions. It cannot make the right decisions for vast numbers of local communities, decisions such as what fruit trees to plant where a parking lot is being dug up. Above all the state cannot create the required world view and dispositions.”

“This is a cultural revolution; only when the right ideas and values become predominant can structural change towards simpler lifestyles and systems take place. These conditions show the fundamental mistake built into the standard socialist assumption that the good society must have highly centralised state control. And it shows that the standard socialist strategy of taking control of the state is also fundamentally mistaken. We will eventually take it but at the present early stage of the revolution trying to do so is a waste of time, partly because the system is far too deeply entrenched, but mainly because there are much more important subversive things to do right now.”

“This is a classical anarchist vision of small scale cooperative communities run on thoroughly participatory lines free from domination by outside forces. It has been made essential now by the advent of the limits to growth. In previous revolutions it made sense to try to take power off the ruling class and to run the industrial system in the interests of all via a centralised state. But now the situation is totally different; central states cannot create or run the kinds of communities needed get per capita resource use rates right down while enabling good quality of life.”

“Consider the impossible logic embedded in socialist strategic thinking. If by some miracle a government with these ideas got state power tomorrow it could not implement Simpler Way practices unless there had been such massive support for them that people had elected a government with these policies. There is no possibility of that happening in the foreseeable future in a society obsessed with growth and affluence. It could only happen after there had been the greatest cultural transition in history, to willing acceptance of simpler ways. That transition would have been the revolution; the subsequent change in structures, including our control of the remnant state, would then be consequences of the revolution. It is therefore clearly a mistake to focus on taking state power at this point in time. What we need to focus on is working to bring about the crucial changes in ideas and values.”

“What then is to be done? Again the anarchists have the right answer. It is to “prefigure” the alternative. That is, build some of the required new ways here and now within the old system. The point of pre-figuring can easily be misunderstood. It does not assume that just setting up post-revolutionary arrangements one by one will lead to these eventually having replaced consumer-capitalist ways. The main point is educational/ideological. By becoming involved in the many emerging local initiatives activists are likely to be in the most effective position to acquaint participants and onlookers with the need to dump capitalism and build local needs-driven economies under local control.”

“The more people we help to understand all this in the short time remaining the better will be our chances of establishing the new systems before it’s too late.  So if you want to help us solve the degrowth conundrum, get down to the community garden.”

“The caterpillar begins by asking Alice the simple question “who are you?” When Alice finds that she cannot properly articulate who she is, no doubt a side effect of constant exposure to the chaos and nonsense of Wonderland, the caterpillar recognizes that Alice’s time in the “strange” land has taken a serious toll on her sense of self.”

I would like for you to read the latest from Energyshift.net “A-World-Out-Of-Balance”.  JJ is a Mayan scholar who translates the Mayan world view in an approachable form for the normal people like me.  JJ puts our current dramatic time in history in Mayan context.  This is needed because this is an age characterized by a spirtual drift of meaninglessness.  We know so much these days with so little meaning.  The result is we are now lost in a strange land like Alice in Wonderland. 

Humans lack meaning today because we have lost proper wisdom.  Wisdom is different than knowing.  Wisdom is about knowing what to know.  Proper management of knowledge is more important than quantity of knowledge.  Here quality takes precedent over quantity.  Today knowing is about knowing everything possible then accumulating this as a center of power and control.  You the individual should instead seek a wisdom that limits this insatiable quest to know the deepest secrets of life.

The difference between these two approaches to knowledge is the contrasting attitudes of arrogance and humility.  We lack control over ourselves and the result is bad behavior as a species.  We have lost an existential balance because arrogance is destabilizing.  Science and technology lead to arrogance when wisdom is not applied.  Without humility our knowledge is now destructive to ourselves and the planets life system.

Wisdom is about choices.   Making a choice is a sacrifice.  There is an opportunity cost with a choice.  These days choices are optional and relative in regards to what to know or not.  Everywhere instead of hard choices there is a can kicking exercise of avoiding choices.  The arrogance that knowledge and technology will solve our multitude of problems has now trapped us.  We are at the point now where choices will be forced on us as a species now.

More than ever wisdom is vital for you the individual, family, and tribe.  The tribe is your extended family and friends.  Local community is the confederation of several tribes.  It is only the local community that can properly navigate decline properly longer term. 

There are few properly functioning local communities these days because of transhumanism and delocalization.  This simple reality is not being faced.  The redevelopment of proper community must first start from the individual, family, and tribe.  It is here a retrenchment is vital.  If these relationship structures strengthen a proper community results.  Wisdom and community are central to the life boat and hospice mentality needed today for a robust adaptation to a world tipping into decline.

There is little restraint these days to stop our pursuit of affluence through science and technology.  The power of affluence to transcend local constraints means tough choices are bypassed.  Most restraints are cost related not wisdom related.  The impulse to and the corruption from affluence is preventing proper knowledge management.  The world is out of balance with competitive cooperation resulting in a subordination of wisdom to affluence.  This globally mobile affluence results in a power corruption.

The competitive is driving science and technology in an unstoppable march towards transhumanism.  Tyrannical control for power is resulting.  Scientism and state capitalism are replacing representative democracies with centralized technocracies.  When Scientism and state capitalism combine a mechanization of life results in a technocratic concentration of power.  Nature is relegated to a commodity.  People become cogs in the machine.  The elites micro manage life to their benefit.

We now have an exaggerated sense of our collective self.  This is straining our relationships with fellow humans and planetary life.  A proper humility is the only cure for this.  This is not likely because spirituality is subservient to science these days.  Science and technocracy rules with a manifest destiny to advance humanism into the transhumanism of the machine.  Scientism is a religion of affluence.  Wisdom is the step child in this unconstrained juggernaut of arrogance of knowledge and power.

One should reflect on Mayan cosmology for meaning in this time of meaninglessness.  The Mayan perspective is useful because the cyclic merges meaning and non-meaning.   The cyclic illustrates that meaning and non-meaning revolve around the other.  This is similar to chaos in Chaos Theory.  Chaos is systematic randomness.  Notice the incongruous juxtaposition?  There is a system to randomness.  This offer clues to finding meaning for us the individual in a time of meaninglessness. This is the rhythm of life.  Life’s ebb and flow is cyclic.

Absolute order is paralysis and complete randomness is disorder.  When they assume their place together then there is a rhythm.  This abstraction is where sacred dwells.  The universe is this expression and the system of life mirrors this refection in its nature.  This is a metaphysical fractal.  Entropy and negative entropy dance together.  Humans reflect this with our self-consciousness. 

The Maya reflects this dance in their elaborate worldview of ancient science and myth.  One must use physics and metaphysics to understand this.  This is a holistic effort of both myth and science properly positioned reflecting metaphyscal and physical fractals.  “Matthew 6:10 may your Kingdom come; may your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Both assume their pole with basic wisdom as the gate keeper.

Today myths are considered superstitious.  Myths are treated as unscientific so dismissed as a key source of meaning.   What is odd is Scientism is actually a myth system.  This reality is obscured with scientific subterfuge with multiple elaborate cognitive biases to protect the rot of a narrative of irrational absurdities.   Lies must support lies so the result is a creep of moral hazard which is at its root the avoidance of hard existential choices.  Humans have lied their way into a bottleneck.  For those not lying the bottleneck is unfolding before our eyes.

The Maya world view through calendars and their relationships is important to you now.  You can see meaning in meaninglessness.  This cyclical world view is far advanced to our science today in regards to the key aspect of life that is wisdom.  Scaling myth and science properly is wisdom.  Maya scaled myth and science properly. 

Science looks to breakdown into parts meaning in a linear meaning.  Meaning is created and built upon seeking a climax.  The Maya saw meaning unfolding.  Meaning can’t be properly known unless one uses physical and metaphysical tools properly scaled.  Self-consciousness has the ability to use both.  When proper wisdom is employed a modulation between the two is embraced.

This unfolding is in a process of meaning and not meaning.  This sacred system is deterministic so in this sense the outcome is already.   This is the isness of being of the Toa.  Self-consciousness gets lost in this process only to be found.   Connectivity is the pathway to meaning but also the cliff the ego must step off.  Free will is how this system behaves but within its nature of determinism.

I can talk like this because I am a green shaman.  Shamanism is oral and intimate so I do not need to reference and backup what I say.  I am speaking not as a scholar but as your spirtual advisor.  For a shaman his work is spirtual not scientific.  Yet, science must be respected too it is just a shaman job is to relate spirtual messages. 

I am not claiming authority with either.  I am only relating my experience through the ancient calling of shamanism.  I am not going to talk with you like a scholar but I will urge you to listen to people like JJ.  Scholars who are properly scaled in their pursuit are vital to spirtual meaning.  These worlds coexist as one so they require expertise with both to have proper wisdom.  Respect science because human survival requires it.

I am a generalist that seeks spirtual meaning from connecting to nature.  I enjoy science and history.   They are a passion of mine.  My qualifications for shamanism is my ability to have spirtual vision.  I can feel what others can’t and see because of this.  True shamans are not messianic.  They are not prophets like civilization has produced.  They hark back to a more primitive time.  They are tribal and speak for and to the family.  My message is not going to change the world it is meant for very few.

I see at this point in time permaculture localism is the cure for meaninglessness.  It is only through wisdom and its intimate approach to the land that man can navigate back to a proper balance.  Scientism is the antithesis to this balance that comes from humility.  Scientism is now the tipping point of arrogance.  This is tipping point is the subordination of wisdom to scientism.  It is this destabilizing force taking ourselves and planetary systems into a bifurcation of succession.

In the big world of the Mayan calendar this is accounted for.  I am speaking as tribal member.  Here is where the potential for action is in a natural response.  This naturalness I speak of is green shamanism.  Be yourself in permaculture localism and nature will cure you.  The big world of the Maya affects you but in the microclime of your local there is places for constructive growth that are like eddies in the current.  Respecting both worlds allows each their place.  If you find this place a harmony results.

You should seek meaning but be prepared to lose it.  You should get lost to find yourself.  This sounds so simplistic that it is beyond reach for most.  This age of meaninglessness is unfolding into meaning.  Following the Mayan cyclic view helps one position in this unfolding of meaning.  It is much like living seasonally on the farm.  The current season is of destructive change.   In your small microclime local you can find constructive growth.  We are entering a winter dearth.   Now is the time to adapt locally.  Ecological niches behave like this so reflect their fractal nature.  Become a fractal reflection.

The season ahead is a spirtual season emerging from a time of scientific arrogance.  Science and affluence caused us to get lost.  We are lost in ourselves and now life is jolting us back.  The Maya viewed this as the way of the unfolding.  Our age is at the equinox of meaning.  Night is becoming day.  This acceptance of the sacred nature of the cyclic offers salvation.  This is a grace that cures the ills of our wandering ego.

As a shaman I am concern about your local spirituality.  These bigger dramas are something I find enjoyment in.  I have reverence for these dramas because when I naturally seek the meaning, I inevitably find I am lost.  I can’t understand all this.  There is too much to comprehend.  When I get lost, I find myself.  We are lost but meaning will unfold because it is cyclic.  Calm yourself in this.  This is the basic of faith but a faith grounded in honesty and humility.  Scientism is an arrogance that prevents proper humility yet this is a natural process that is part of the myth.

Spirtual meaning is a metaphysical reality.  You can use science with metaphysics but you can’t find metaphysical meaning through science.  Metaphysical meaning is through connectivity.  To connect you must first get lost.  Humans are now collectively lost because science is in diminishing returns.  Science actually serves to disperse meaning because proper meaning needs the restraint of wisdom.  This age is tipping over because of this nonlinear convergence.

Scientism is a revolutionary system that has no boundaries.  Power and control are its unconscious goal.  This becomes a mechanization through transhumanism and delocalization because these human forces are raw power.  This leverage is destructive beyond a simple application.  Scale is lost and the result is existential imbalances.  This unconscious quest for power is ultimately the quest for immortality.  This kind of immortality seeking is blasphemous to the sacred.

The only way you can approach these sacred truths is in reverence.  Reverence is from connection and this is why I have no references and backup.  Respect is a feeling and as an emotion there are no equations.  It can’t be explained by breaking it down scientifically.   If I sound repetitive then listen to a Tibetan Monk chant or recite the holy Rosary with others.  This is a connection to the rhythm of life that is cathartic.

As a shaman in my local I am practicing permaculture localism.  This is a spirtual permaculture because it is about connectivity to the land and people.  It is about mother earth but also the body of Christ.  This is the dawning of a spirtual age because science has brought us to the cliff of meaninglessness.  The reason the Mayan should be consulted through their sacred texts is they give a story of why there is meaning in this state of being lost.  We will soon find ourselves because this is the way of the unfolding. 

Permaculture localism is your lifeboat and your hospice is spirtual permaculture.  Permaculture is a lifeboat navigating this sea of destructive change.  You will be navigating through a dying age with simple green prepping efforts that mirror the metaphysical fractals in nature.  Spirtual Permaculture is the palliative care of feeling naturalism that offer the meaning to assist you on your journey in this time of death. 

Nature is the only way to properly connect.  This is critical to understand because in this age of scientism urban growth is being called for.   For the awakened the message is this age of cities must disperse.  This is why cities and centers of knowledge are now the forces of darkness.  Our smartest people are the most deceived.  In artificial intelligence the deception is complete.  This message is now being doubled down upon in a technocratic belief system.  This hidden narrative has assumed blasphemous proportions and will be swept away in the coming bottleneck.

The faithful of scientism have deadly serious passions that are anti-life.  People are excessively passionate about self-worth, envy, and resentment these days.   This is an indication we are in the vicinity of the return to a proper orientation to the sacred.  Affluence is the illness that has brought us to this tipping point.

All religions are corrupted with this because this is the nature of this cyclic age.  It can be no other way.  All religions have their eddies of wisdom.  This means find a microclime for your higher power in permaculture localism and green prepping.  There is no hope for scientism because science should never have assumed a spirtual expression.  Scientism is the mechanization of life through the machine.  This results in anti-life attitudes.  Scientism will destroy itself because of this.

The ego is now so preoccupied with science and knowing it is now getting lost like Alice in her Wonderland.  She is dreaming really and she will wake up.  This is grace.  Grace is what occurs in connectivity.  The wonderfully protected ego is finally exhausted with itself and in the experience a natural reconnection results.  The ego tricks itself unconsciously because this is the nature of the cyclic and the linear. 

This is a birthing.  This is a tipping point.  This is an unfolding and in this time in our collective history decades are unfolding in months.  Time is speeding up like the final year of life of a terminal illness.  This is how you know we are in the vicinity of an emergence of a sacred expression.  You can better prepare for this locally and in permaculture.  Science is a hinderance now to proper connectivity.  Affluence and arrogance are the siren song of despair.

What I said above is a word salad because I am attempting to describe something sacred.  It does not come out in words properly.  It sounds childish to speak like this.  This is the point though because we all enjoy a child’s description of something.  We are children of the sacred.  True adults are children who in humility accept the sacred way.  When in proper balance there is a natural innocence of proper place.  Knowledge destroys innocence.  If innocence is not respected with proper wisdom, then all the knowledge in the world is worthless.

I don’t know why humans are destroying the earth.  Sure, I know scientifically why this is happening.  I can use philosophy, theology, and reason to judge this process.  I can say humans are depraved and nature good.  Yet, when I do this, I am only getting more lost.  The Mayan calendars offer meaning to this condition of being lost through a greater worldview that acknowledges it.  Use Mayan meaning for reflection but be careful about misusing it.  This world view is a physics and a metaphysics from an ancient time.  Imbalances occur if the Mayan approach is not scaled properly.

Today in this age tipping over right is wrong and wrong is right.  This is like a pole shift.   This unfolding means seek proper orientation by swimming out into the current.  If you swim against the current you will drown.  Meaning Is not something you can hold on to or fight.   You can only connect to it in its flowing nature.   Meaning will slip through your hands like water and if you accept this it supports you. 

The Scientism gospel of transhumanism and delocalization are destroying life.  Life primary impulse is to battle entropy.  Scientism is now a force of entropy.  You can see this clearly with how its applications are creating new and increasing problems.  Fixing problems create new ones.  This should be observed with reverence just as a Shakespearian comedy is a tragedy.  When the wonderfully guarded ego lightens up, we can laugh at ourselves.  This may include tears but also the calm of meaning. 

You are a microclime of life.  You will need to approach this with physical and metaphysical tools.  This is the age of science where metaphysical tools have been neglected and dismissed.  Science does not need spirituality to do its work.  Science is so serious now it has opened up a void.  It is natural for the spirtual to fill the void.  Spirtual tools are different tools.  If you use scientific tools spiritually then you get scientism.  You end up with nonsense and this is what is all around us today.

In energy shift’s “World-Out-Of-Balance” JJ shows you the Maya reflection on this story.  I did not do this post to breakdown and critique JJ’s work.  That is not my expertise.  I felt something in his words and this I am telling you as a green shaman.  Read his work.  It is vital for you in this age of decline.

The Mayan insights were far more advanced than our scientific studies today in regard to the sacred.  This is because they had a proper physical and metaphysical balance.  Science is used to study the Maya and this is where JJ excels but to really understand Mayan wisdom a metaphysical approach is required too.  JJ also proposes this but rightfully declines to explain its mystery.  JJ has gone to this world physically and metaphysically.  This makes him both a shaman and a scholar.  Trust his wisdom.

Spirtual wisdom will be applied to scientism at some point.  Mayan stories tell us so.  As a green shaman I am telling you to go local in permaculture because nature already has this figured out.  Be natural like the birds.  Sing your own local song just as a bird does in its range.  Simply put, this age will be the age of family and tribe in their properly scaled villages.  The current age of states, citizens, and globalism is fading away.  Go forth in the innocence of a child and live as your nature already knows.   The deep metaphysical fractals of spirtual meaning are now unfolding.