What Are You Living For?

Bug: Place your projectile weapon on the ground.
Edgar: You can have my gun, when you pry it from my cold dead fingers.
Bug: Your proposal is acceptable. 

-- From Men In Black

In response to the recent mass shootings, President Obama proposed 23 Executive Orders to limit gun ownership, New York passed a new gun control law, and many new laws have been proposed.  The response has been dramatic: gun sales have gone through the roof, sheriffs are vowing to refuse to enforce the law, and some are proclaiming a second American Revolution if people from the Federal government come to take their guns.  The majority of Americans, though, are horrified at the thought, if they think of it at all.  "Nothing is worth dying for" is a popular sentiment.

Charles Rangel has once again reintroduced legislation to reinstate the draft.  His point, as it has been since he started in 2003, is that war is a terrible thing and if military service were involuntary we might not go to war so quickly.  That is a fine sentiment, especially when the wars were already unpopular under George W. Bush.  Today, however, that could backfire, as people are starting to think it a good idea to replace war-weary troops, especially since record numbers are dying from suicide.

I'm sure there are many reasons why this is happening.  I would like to highlight something James Howard Kunstler pointed out years ago in The Geography of Nowhere: we have transformed our neighborhoods into sterile places that we don't care about.  Once the four lane highways and the strip malls and the big box stores and the skyscrapers come in, every place starts looking like every other.

So, to go back, people say "Nothing is worth dying for", but, would you really want it said of you, "S/He died for nothing"?  Everyone has to die sometime.  Ideally it would come after a long, happy life, but that is not always possible.  The worst is a slow, painful, pointless death.  What makes an early death tolerable is if it is meaningful, if it serves a purpose.  It should be a purpose that the person dying felt was worth dying for.  And if you know what is worth dying for, you know what you are living for.

The Long Ascent will be very difficult.  Only those who know what they are living for will want to make the trip.

The Ascender's Creed

I am not a Prepper.

I am not a Survivalist.

I AM NOT A DOOMER.

I REFUSE TO BE KILLING MYSELF TO KEEP MYSELF ALIVE.

I will not worry about every possible hazard we could face.

I will focus on the future I want to create.

I will steadfastly work towards achieving that future.

I will only worry about the things I can control and leave the rest up to higher powers.

I will follow the principle of ensuring that every function is covered by multiple elements and every element has multiple functions and trust in the resiliency of the system.

I BELIEVE IN MANY FUTURES WHERE PEOPLE HAVE HAPPY, HEALTHY, MEANINGFUL LIVES WITHOUT HAVING TO CONSUME NONRENEWABLE RESOURCES OR RENEWABLE RESOURCES AT AN UNSUSTAINABLE RATE.

I believe that entering such a future is purely a matter of choice, collectively and individually.

I believe that we can choose those futures at any time up to the point of extinction.

I believe that the sooner we choose such a future, the easier the transition will be, the more people will be able to make the transition, and the more comfortable and prosperous that future will be.

I call it The Long Ascent because in the end we will only choose one, but at this point there are many paths open.  Where do you want to go?

The Death of Tyranny

One year ago today I started this blog.  The choice of a date was purely a coincidence. Originally I intended it to use it as an entry in John Michael Greer's contest for short stories depicting a future of declining energy usage.  However, I am not much of a fiction writer, but I do love writing essays, and for decades I've been crafting a vision in my head of a possible positive future with greatly reduced resource usage.  I've slowly been revealing bits and pieces to you during this past year.  Since today is a special day I wanted to share a special piece

Aaron Copland wrote a wonderful piece of music called "A Lincoln Portrait".  No matter what you think of his actions, Lincoln did have a powerful way with words.  My favorite quote is from the middle of the piece, from the Lincoln-Douglas debates of October 15, 1858:

When standing erect he was six feet four inches tall, and this is what he said.
He said: "It is the eternal struggle between two principles, right and wrong, throughout the world. It is the same spirit that says 'you toil and work and earn bread, and I'll eat it.' No matter in what shape it comes, whether from the mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the people of his own nation, and live by the fruit of their labor, or from one race of men as an apology for enslaving another race, it is the same tyrannical principle.

Brandon Smith wrote an excellent article a couple weeks back on Alt-Market entitled "How to Defeat Tyranny".  Very importantly, he did not entitle it "How to Defeat a Tyrant".  That is fairly easy.  We have witnessed it at least twice in the past decade, in Iraq and Libya.  But if you just get rid of one man another will frequently take his place. (My apologies to any other female dictators out there, but tyrants do tend to generally be men.)  What Brandon talks about is defeating the spirit of tyranny.  As such it is very much a spiritual striving, a crusade or jihad in the best senses of the words.  As Lincoln said, if you want to force anyone to do your bidding so that you may benefit at his or her expense, you have a tyrannical spirit inside yourself. 

Neither Lincoln nor Brandon Smith went far enough, though.  They can be excused for only facing the most immediate struggles.  However, that is not what this blog is about.  One of the most important themes Daniel Quinn has in his classic book Ishmael is the story of the Takers and the Leavers.  I don't want to go too far into that now, but the Takers are about, as Paul Wheaton so colorfully puts it, "making Mother Nature your personal bitch."   The Leavers try to change things as little as possible.  What Quinn misses is that there are two antonyms to "take".  Not only do you have "take it or leave it", you have "give and take".  So in addition to Leavers and Takers, you can have Givers.  If you can manage to give back more than you take, there are no limits.

This brings us back to the tyrannical spirit.  People are beginning to understand now that ethics does not just apply to how you treat other people.  If you just take from Nature without ever giving back, you still have the same tyrannical spirit.  IT DOES NOT WORK.  IT HAS NEVER WORKED.  IT WILL NEVER WORK.  The difficulty is that the problems accumulate over generations.  Unless you have the correct perspective, you may think it is working, like someone falling out of a building saying "See? I'm not dead!" as he passes every floor.  Nature only has so much to give.

I just want to say here that I am saying this not as someone who has won the war over that tyrannical spirit within myself, over even as one who wins more battles than he loses.  I just know that it is a fight that needs to be fought, and while I may frequently need to pick my battles, I always keep fighting.

Victor Hugo said, "There is nothing so powerful as an idea whose time has come."  I say there is nothing so dangerous as an idea whose time is about to pass.  It is time for the very idea of tyranny to die.  The thought that you can get something without giving something back must be extinguished.  And it will be, whether it takes the deaths of 7 people or 7 billion.  Like drawing money out of a bank account, if you take it out faster than you earn interest, it doesn't matter how large it was to begin with, eventually you must go broke.  Nor does it matter how many #10 cans you store or how many cases of ammo you cache.

So what is the opposite of tyranny? Husbandry.  From the bacteria in our guts and the fungi on our skin to the food webs in the rain forests and the oceans, we must care for all forms of life, helping them so that they may in turn help us.  This is the only way we can survive.  This is the way we will thrive.  This is the Long Ascent.

On Earth As It Is On Mars

"A day on Mars is a little longer than a day on Earth: 24 hours and 40 minutes.  A year on Mars is less than two Earth years: 686 Earth days, or 668 Martian days.  Mars is 6,787 kilometers in diameter, compared to Earth's 12,756 kilometers.  Its gravitational acceleration is 3.71 meters per second squared, or just over one-third of Earth's.  The atmospheric pressure at the surface of Mars averages 5.6 millibars, about one-half of one percent of Earth's.  The atmosphere is largely composed of carbon dioxide.  Temperatures at the "datum" or reference surface level (there is no "sea level", as there are presently no seas) vary from -130 to +27 Celsius.  An unprotected human on the surface of Mars would very likely freeze within minutes, but first would die of exposure to the near-vacuum.  If this unfortunate human survived freezing and low pressure, and found a supply of oxygen to breathe, she would still be endangered by high levels of radiation from the sun and elsewhere.

After Earth, Mars is the most hospitable planet in the Solar System."  --Greg Bear, Moving Mars

Some people see exploring outer space as a colossal waste.  Any numbers associated with outer space truly are mind-boggling.  Light, which could circle the Earth more than 7 times in one second, takes over two seconds to go to the Moon and back and over 8 minutes to travel from the Sun to the Earth.  Mars is 50% further away than the Earth, so you would have to wait from 8 to 40 minutes to get a reply.  Sending a package to Mars today would take at least 6 months and cost well over $10,000 a pound.  Even if you devised some technomagical teleportation system that just had to overcome the Earth's gravitational pull, at today's prices for electricity it would cost over $7 to send a gallon of water to the Moon.

Most people will agree that satellites have improved life here on Earth.  Many people use Global Positioning Satellites (GPS) to navigate.  Satellite TV is a popular option.  And virtually everyone who gets a weather forecast benefits from weather satellites.

Beyond satellites, though, the short-term benefits are dubious at best.  Even Gerard K O'Neill, one of the biggest early proponents of solar power satellites, projected that it would take at least 20 years before the program produced as much energy as it consumed.  Other projects have even worse economic projections.

Not all benefits can be measured economically, though.  There are the spin-off technologies such as photovoltaics, of course.  Some people fantasize about finding another Earth-like planet and finding a faster-than-light way to get there.  Even if that were remotely possible, it still wouldn't solve any of our problems.  But look at the threats facing us, and then compare them with what life on Mars would be like.  Nuclear meltdown?  EMP weapons?  Massive solar flares?  Mars doesn't have a magnetic field, you would need that kind of shielding everyday.  Desertification?  Mars is a desert.  Sea level rise?  Deforestation?  Loss of wildlife?  Loss of arable land?  Loss of industry?  Running out of oil?  Mars doesn't have any of those to begin with.

Every conceivable problem we face, short of a rogue black hole, would be much worse on Mars.  Logically, this means, if we can solve those problems so we can live on Mars, we can solve those problems so we can live on Earth.

Sometimes doing things just because they are hard makes the Long Ascent easier.

The Road Ahead

I've been working out the map for the Long Ascent for a long time. Tripp, over at Small Batch Garden, is ahead of me on the actual journey, which he documents well in his blog.  I highly recommend reading it if you want to see what everyday life on the Long Ascent is really like.  He recently posted on his blog an excellent piece, "Starting at 40", that maps out the future pretty well.  The last paragraph gives a wonderful explanation of why I call the road ahead the Long Ascent.  Coming from someone who truly lives it makes it truly meaningful:

I've modeled my activity around these trends and around permaculture principles more generally for the past 4 years, and can say, first-hand, that it is a joyful and rewarding way to live, whatever the time frame for energy descent turns out to be.  It's hard sometimes - automatic dish and clothes washers are pretty awesome tools when one wants to spend their time doing something else.  And let's face it, who doesn't want to spend their time doing something other than washing clothes and dishes by hand!  It's a lot more deliberate, living in power down mode; the number of things one can accomplish in any given day declines dramatically without those excellent fossil fuels working constantly behind the scenes to free up our time.  But there is a certain elagance, a kind of da Vincian sophistication, that can only be found in a life lived simply.  Hardly a day goes by now when either I or my wife don't utter the phrase, "I love our life," and how many people, fossil-fueled or not, can say that?  There is a real and tangible silver lining in energy descent, but it has to be experienced first-hand.  It can't be lived and written about by proxy.  I mean, it can, obviously, but it won't mean much until you own it for yourself.  It's not a lesser life, it's not even a lateral move, it's actually better this way, because it's the way we have always lived and done business.  Realigning with a more classical way of life is normal, peaceful, and fulfilling.  It's the last couple hundred years that are the strange bit.

That's why overcoming our addiction to fossil fuels is the start of the Long Ascent.

The Ratchet Effects

For those who don't know tools, a ratchet is a device which allows something to move in one direction but not the other.  A ratcheting screwdriver, for example, will only turn the screw in one direction, so you can twist it back and forth without having to let go.

When a technology is introduced that expands the capacity to produce food, population grows to use all that extra capacity.  People don't generally voluntarily reduce population size, so the adoption of that technology becomes irreversible.  (I would like to thank Garrett Hardin for introducing me the ratchet effect.  It really is just an extension of Thomas Malthus's ideas and is central to Jevon's Paradox, that increasing efficiency in using a resource increases the overall use of that resource.  Hardin was specifically concerned with food production, but the ratchet effect applies to many other endeavors.)

Just because people don't choose to do something, however, doesn't mean it doesn't happen.  Technologies can be lost and populations reduced without any intention.  When they cut down the last tree on Easter Island, being a lumberjack was obsolete.  The bubonic plague significantly reduced the number of Europeans.

Going back to the tool analogy, a screwdriver which only tightens or only loosens screws isn't very useful.  That's why ratcheting screwdrivers have a switch: flipped one way it tightens, flipped the other it loosens.

There also is an reverse ratchet effect.  Extinction is a 100% phenomenon; a species is not extinct until every male or every female of a species is dead or incapable of reproducing.  So too is it with technology.  As long as someone somewhere in the world knows how to do something, the technology is not completely lost.  With the key technologies that allowed populations to expand, this leads to a ratchet effect on the downside.  Those who still have those technologies will have an advantage over those who don't, and they will grow in proportion to those who don't.  (Please note I am talking about relative percentages, so if one group loses 50% of its population and the other loses 75%, the first has doubled in relative proportion to the second.)

No matter how bad things get in the short term, the reverse ratchet effect will determine where we resume the Long Ascent from.

Ripe Blackberries

You have never picked a ripe blackberry.

I have never picked a truly ripe blackberry.

No one, in the history of the world, has ever picked a truly ripe blackberry.

When a blackberry is allowed to fully ripen on the cane, the slightest bump will send it tumbling to the ground.  If you approach it very carefully, and in one quick motion grasp both sides of the very ripe blackberry with equal pressure, you will be rewarded with a sweet sticky mess on your fingers.  Licking off your fingers will make every other blackberry you have tasted pale in comparison.

There are two kickers, of course.  Visually a truly ripe blackberry looks very much like an almost ripe blackberry, so you never really know when you will get one.  Once the berry starts to dry out and look leathery, it is overripe.  It still will make a decent tea, though.  The other thing is that if you use gloves to protect your fingers from the prickles, the effect is not nearly the same.

The larger point is that you will never have this experience unless you are out there in the blackberry patch picking berries.  Okay, maybe a really good friend will let you lick his or her fingers, but you still have to be out there with him or her.  A pack of berries you buy will never have ones quite that ripe, even if you get them from a farmer's market.  And while you can buy the blackberry bushes to plant, chances are good that if you live in an area where blackberries do well, some bird will come along and deposit the seeds naturally.  Once you get a number of these, you will probably want to only keep the best and cut out the rest, as I have done.

On the Long Ascent, you can find, for free, simple pleasures that are better than any you can buy.

A Little Blue Ball

"The only real recourse is for each of us to realize that the elements we have are not inexhaustible. We’re all in the same spaceship." -- Frank Borman, commander of Apollo 8 

As people get ready to celebrate Earth Day on April 22nd, I want to remind you of a famous picture:

I think it no coincidence that the first Earth Day was celebrated a mere 16 months after this picture was taken.  I'm not saying that this image itself was the impetus for Earth Day, but images do have power.  The space program gave us a unique viewpoint we never had before.  Our planet is immensely large from our own personal perspective.  Even traveling one quarter of the way around it in a jet airplane feels like a major undertaking.  When looking at a map or a globe, all the details we see make it seem large.  From a spaceship hundreds of thousands of miles away, however, our planet is just a little blue ball hanging in space.  We need to be grateful for the blessing this world is in our otherwise harsh universe.

This perspective is critical to guiding our path on the Long Ascent.

The Ultimate Forms of Savings

"Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon the earth, where moth and rust consume, and where thieves break through and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth consume, and where thieves do not break through nor steal; for where thy treasure is, there will thy heart be also."  Matthew 6:19-21 (ASV).

More and more people are coming to the realization that things cannot keep going on the way they have been.  From the limited perspective of their own lifetimes, and possibly their parent's or children's lifetimes (even grandparent's or grandchildren's), they just see progress in the past and decline in the future.  Many are asking what is the best way to hang on to what they have.  For some, gold is the answer.  Others rely on a well-stocked pantry.  Guns and ammo are another popular option.  There are good arguments for all of them.  But none of them are ultimate; they can all be taken away or used up.

Obviously, the ultimate form of wealth is one that transcends death.  Various religions have different concepts of what exactly that is.  Jesus talked about "storing treasures in heaven."  Karma is another such concept for those who believe in reincarnation.  Spiritual growth is certainly a worthy pursuit, and I encourage anyone who is interested in this to find someone to help them.  I cannot however help you choose; the best I can do is relate my own experiences.

After your favorite deity, the next best thing to rely on is yourself.  Specifically, if you are looking to save what you can for the future, your knowledge and your health are the best investments.  Both can be maintained for most of a lifetime.  Neither can be stolen from you.  Others may be able to damage both, but they cannot in doing so make themselves smarter or healthier.  There are many options still available for improving both mind and body; I will touch upon a number of them in coming weeks.

After your spirit, mind, and body lies your relationships and your community.  In this world, other people will continue on after you are gone.  Hopefully, they will be there for you when your body and mind start to decline.  Many sources of advice exist for how to have good relationships with others, and from the statistics, many need help in this area.  How to build strong communities is a bit of a mystery to me.  Many attempts have been made, but in a majority of cases they only grow while the founders are still alive; the next generation just maintains what they have, and decline sets in quickly thereafter.

Resilient, cohesive communities are one of the most valuable assets on the Long Ascent.

A Matter of Perspective

How long is long?  It depends on who you ask.

When I read James Howard Kunstler's The Long Emergency, I practically breathed a sigh of relief.  Finally I had found someone who understood the dangers of fossil fuel depletion.  Since I had read Marion King Hubbert's work in the early 1980s, I felt like I was a lone voice in the wilderness trying to warn people.  At the time I shared Kuntstler's rather bleak view of the coming decades.

Many in the sustainability movement use the concept of the "seventh generation," a guideline that the Iroquois are reputed to have used.  At roughly 20 years per generation, that is 140 years in the future.

I have a great deal of respect for John Michael Greer.  His blog, The Archdruid Report, is one of the few things I anticipate reading each week.  I find myself agreeing with a great deal of what he says.  Where we differ is in a matter of perspective.  Like many others in the Peak Oil movement, he sees the future as a matter of decline.  Some of his most popular books are The Long Descent, The Eco-Technic Future, and The Wealth of Nature.  The future centuries he envisions are not as bad as most Peak Oil prophets imagine.

Marshall Savage had a broader perspective.  His masterwork, The Millennial Project: Colonizing the Galaxy in Eight Easy Steps, is a grand, sweeping vision of a bright future.  Regrettably, he actually starts the book at Step 2, with Step 1, the Foundation, as an epilogue.  It almost does seem like an afterthought, not having been as carefully thought out as the rest.  While the dream is still being kept alive by the Living Universe Foundation, little progress has been made.

The Long Now Foundation has one of the longest time horizons I have seen.  One of their concerns is the Y10K problem; they suggest everyone start writing the year with a leading zero, e.g. 02011.  Another project is the 10,000 Year Clock.  Their goal is to encourage long-term thinking.

Why does perspective matter?  My answer to that is taken from The Rules of Victory, a translation and commentary on Sun Tzu's The Art of War.  The best way to win is to "take whole", which in simplest terms could be described as getting your opponent to surrender without a fight.  (It actually is much more subtle than this; I highly recommend reading this book to fully understand the concept.)  As a rule, it is the person with the greater perspective who has the best chance of victory.

How long is long?  For my answer, take the chart of any "peak" which isn't necessarily dependent on a nonrenewable resource, for example, population, knowledge, energy usage, prosperity.  Shrink it down until it is just a small bump in a gently rising road, just large enough to be tripped over, where a human lifespan is just a point.

That is how long I mean when I say "The Long Ascent".