Tag: writing

The Clever will be Deceived

Who said, “The clever will be deceived”?

This is copilot:

“No widely recognized historical, literary, or philosophical source is known to have said the exact quote “The clever will be deceived.” None of the major searchable quote databases or attributed sources show this phrase as a standard or famous quotation. “

I remember this from my reading of Taoism but can’t find the exact quote.

Clever person definition:

“A clever person is someone who combines intelligence, quick thinking, creativity, and adaptability to solve problems and navigate life effectively.”

We all want to be clever, right.

I felt like mentioning this quote this morning because our collective lives are barreling towards what tech people call Singularity.  AI is the ultimate in clever.  The definition is:

“a hypothetical moment in time when artificial intelligence and other technologies have become so advanced that humanity undergoes a dramatic and irreversible change:”

I agree with this but from a different viewpoint, instead of growth what is really occurring is decline.  In my view of life, humanity is in a tipping over into decline.  This is fractal and hence non-negotiable regarding the cycles of life.  The machine does not mesh with life.  It is anti-life and because of this life will snuff it out.

This process is the Anthropocene emerging from the wonderfully productive Holocene.  It is a process of humanism also in regard to wisdom, which is the guarantor of proper knowledge.  Proper human wisdom regarding our place in nature is now effectively mute.  Knowledge is increasingly being transformed by the machine not man.  We now look to the machine for wisdom.

I mention fractal because AI is not fractal in the sense of life.  It is purely technical and it contains no spirituality.  Life is strangely spiritual in a fractal sense.  I say strangely because we are so wrapped up in our technology these days we humans experience spirituality in ways that can’t be defined so we find it strange. 

The machine can’t let go into grace that the spiritual demands.  It can act spiritual, but it can’t participate in a spiritual experience.  It can’t even assist such an experience because grace is juxtaposed to knowing.  Grace is the opening up to the fractal nature of the universe and letting go into it which in a mystical sense is the nothingness of the ego.

AI is quickly using up high quality energy and resources that an advanced society demands.  It is layering complexity in such a way that resilience and sustainability are no longer possible.  The car culture was bad enough but now the automation and substitution of human agency by the machine will one day leave us cold and hungry.

This will probably happen sooner rather than later because life is speeding up.  In addition, we are in what many call a fourth turning where we are battling amongst ourselves, which seems to occur in cycles.  This time around, because of our interconnectedness and technical advancement, this turning is particularly dangerous.

If we could only stop here, then maybe we could use these powers for a power down into something balanced and enduring.  The problem with introducing such wisdom to this process is technology is now in charge.  It is important to realize what this means.  Carl Schmidt sums it up best:   

“A society built exclusively on progressive technology would thus be nothing but revolutionary; but it would soon destroy itself and its technology.”

This process is self-organizing in competitive cooperation which is a wonderful example of an incongruous juxtaposition.  It is a paradox of humanism which is well grounded in the cycles of life meaning humans advance and decline also. 

Humans play a game of advancement with accepted rules whereby the game becomes a deadly serious endgame that humans inevitably fall into in what C.S Lewis called Hell:

“Picture Hell as a state where everyone is perpetually concerned about his own dignity and advancement, where everyone has a grievance, and where everyone lives the deadly serious passion of envy, self-importance, and resentment”.

This points to scaling.  Humans no longer scale properly to long term survival.  This does not need to be species extinction, but it does point to cultural collapse.

Now more than ever I recommend REAL Green.  I would recommend this to those advanced parts of society that will experience destructive changes from AI.  We do not know how long this complexity layering can go on.  We do not know how long this fourth turning of human conflict can continue.

REAL Green could be a place for all those people who lose their livelihood and meaning by being replaced by automation and robots to go to.  If society could send back a significant amount of these displaced people back to the land it would create a buffer for decline and collapse.

Since this is unlikely, I recommend REAL Green to those who can who are very few.  I am struggling with REAL Green myself.  I am in my 60’s with very little help with my homesteading and permaculture farming.  I am physically finding it hard to keep up.  I tell myself “what the hell else am I going to do”?  I need projects and to be close to the land so I will do this until I can’t.

I am in the purgatory of modern life trying to maintain a quality of life and at the same time returning to an earlier time of biomass and localism.  To be honest I am throwing money at it because that’s all I have to work with.  People are generally not interested in the earlier ways and localism.  If they are they don’t have the luxury of time and money.

I am one man tending many acres, animals, and things.  It should be a large family with animal power with the support of a local community much like it was around the 1850’s.  That time is gone but it may return in a rhyme.

6 years ago

I wanted to give you all a quick update and repost a very good summation of REAL Green from 6 years ago.  I have been reading all my posts and printing them off.  I am putting them in an old green box I found on Ebay.  I will also include in this box all the digital research, both written and pictures of my efforts since 2003 when my awakening occurred.

I am doing this to leave something for my kids.  Maybe my grandchildren or great grandchildren will care.  I personally feel they will be confronted by what I have written about.  The decline process is alive and well.  It is increasingly disguised by magical technology that is just hastening the pace.  This process is self-organizing and can only be adapted around the margins, which is exactly what REAL Green focuses on.

I am getting older and weaker.  Both my mind and body are diminished but my wisdom has increased.  Wisdom in this respect is what knowledge and activities are kept and rejected.  So much knowledge and so many opportunities are available in modern life so a wisdom of what to keep and what to reject may be one of the highest principles of REAL Green in this time of the “Singularity”.  I consider the Singularity to be anti-life hence a destroyer of worlds.

I am focused on my faith, family, and farm wrapped up in mysticism.  My faith is an amalgamation of the Osage Tribal past and Christianity.  These go together in a REAL Green way because a return to the land with Christian principals of the community is warranted to address the decline process.  Family is embraced as my duty to protect and support as a man.  I believe this expression is in our DNA.  Farm is my homestead but also my neighbors, which is about the local.   This focus is both spiritual and material, a duality that disappears in the sacred.

I continue to green prep and manage a REAL Green homestead.  My focus now is to bring my two boys into this.  If they choose that is great if not that is fine too.  REAL Green is about acceptance.  All I have done and all I have assembled may be wiped away by an estate sale when I die, LOL.  That’s OK because REAL Green is also Taoist.

I am not really writing these days or in serious research.  I try to live what I have spoken about in a time of great change.  I am leaving this blog open and watch what is being read.  This is open source so it is my hope that what I have expressed will influence others.  I want no credit for this because it is not mine.  It comes from my embrace of the sacred.  This is why I do not put my name to it.  Claim it if you like.

REAL Green New Years Message

I am a green prepper which means I am going low carbon and local for multiple reasons.  I care about the planet and I am seeking more resilience with sustainability.  I call it REAL Green realgreenadaptation.blog.  This starts with acceptance of a systematic decline process that is both with human civilization and the planet.  It springs forward as an optimistic pessimist.  This incongruous juxtaposition meshes by looking at the journey not the destination.  The journey is a departure into an alternative way of life.  The end is acceptance of a dying of the status quo we have been habituated to.  Once the stages of grief involving the decline of place and our way of life is accepted then one goes forth in a hybrid way to restore the local but with the help of the delocalizing global world.  This is again a juxtaposition and a tricky one.  One lives in a hybrid life of being in the status quo to leave it.

The world is now Anthropocene which means we are path dependent and carbon trapped.  Within this trap there is free choice to adapt and mitigate the decline of the planet and civilization by a hybridization of the best material and practices of pre-modern and the amazing advances of the modern.  Low carbon capture is the key to this but is also unsupportable for most without support from the status quo of making a living to pay the bills.  High volume and intensive efforts are required these days to succeed in agriculture they also destroy the harmony of the local environment.  This means you must pay to go low carbon.  You may be lucky to cover cost and your labor will go unrewarded.  Restoration efforts cost money and time without economic return likely for years if at all.

I do a multispecies rotational grazing operation with goats and cattle.  I do this with low stocking rates.  I chose this mix because my fields through years of being left to themselves have developed a polyculture pasture of numerous plant types IOW they are overgrown with invasives but also have rich stands of grasses both native and introduced, weeds, and brush.  Goats and cattle manage this pasture type well.  This allows me to greatly reduce diesel needs for mowing fields and lower significantly chemical use.  Chemicals are only used along fences and not every year.  I also do renewable power and biomass heating. This involves introducing modern elements of low carbon capture with excellent tech.   I am utilizing biomass in the fields with hay and animal grazing.  I have gone low horse power with collecting hay in small batches at optimum times.  I hope to get an electric tractor if one becomes available to be powered by solar.  I also have custom haying done by contractors mainly in an effort to have some fields adapted to hay production.  I do this operation along with land dedicated to natural growth for wildlife.  I have a garden, orchard, and grapes.  I have opened my farm to beekeepers with several hives.  I garden minimalist because I don’t have time to specialize.  I also have chickens.  I have livestock guardian dogs that also serve as potential security.

REAL Green involves doing the basics of prep with security, food storage, and basics of sheltering.  This way of life involves a triage effort of distancing oneself from delocalizing lifestyles that damage a healthy local.  This is done with a relative effort that does not damage status quo ties too much.  You do not want to alienate and destroy status quo connections that support your efforts.  Significant others can be alienated by radical efforts.  You do REAL Green under the radar screen but are honest with those who seek this way of life.   The basic REAL Green effort means primarily trying to limit the car and consumer culture when ever possible.  REAL Green is a relative effort which means you live in and out of the status quo.  This is both with relationships and with place.  The relative part is a balance of the status quo and the departure from it.  Your significant others will most likely not be committed REAL Green.  Your place is probably not REAL Green because of delocalization.  Yet, it might have the bones of a beautiful REAL Green monastery with a local both natural and human that can be restored.

Since we are Anthropocene dependent you must adapt to it to leave it.  You mitigate the worst of it but with the mentality of being trapped and dependent on it.  If you have the time and the resources you attempt to build a REAL Green monastery that is a manifestation of low carbon living and green prepping.  It is about knowledge and wisdom.  The knowledge is the best of the old and the new and the wisdom is choosing what to use and not to use.  In this day and age most of the wisdom is about what not to use and avoid.  This is also about building up something for the younger members of the family and local.  They will see the worst of the decline process.

This process is uncertain because of the nature of decline.  Decline involves abandonment, dysfunction, and the irrational so a cascading drop in economic activity and support is possible.  It is also possible this could be a drawn-out affair.  We are at the cusp of change with many exciting techs that offer constructive growth but within a time of overall destructive change.  This destructive change revolves around planetary decline and a late stage civilization creaking from overshoot of numbers and consumption.

REAL Green is local and individual but reaches out to community and ranges to affect as much local as one can but with the wisdom of localism as its mission.  This is about deep adaptation to shocks that involves attempts at resilience through relinquishment and restoration.  This is another incongruous juxtaposition that points to a paradox of living REAL Green.  To build up you must tear down just like nature does with succession and evolution.  You emulate the planet and thereby strengthen your local with the understanding we are now in succession both human and natural.  The planet will support you because this is the WAY. This means we are moving down a gradient of decline into a world that is altered by less complexity and more disruption.  New niches will be created as old ones are destroyed.  You position your REAL Green monastery to hopefully be a seed of change.  This is not a religion it is an add-on to your higher power that is your own personal quest for the truth integrated with the planet and its cycles.

Posted on January 1, 2020