Why I Use Toilet Paper

On the surface, the answer is trite and obvious, and this may seem like a strange topic, especially for a blog concerned with the "big picture".  The timing may be puzzling, too, unless you follow The Archdruid Report, where his did discuss sewer districts recently.  The point he was making was about forming local associations to deal with local problems.  I and several others made the point that dealing with your own waste is best done at an individual or household level.  The problem, of course, is when your neighbors refuse to properly deal with their own waste and try to pass it along to you.  This, then, becomes a management of the commons issue, which was the post John Michael Greer put up three weeks before.

Back to the issue at hand, there are several arguments against using toilet paper.  From the prepper/survivalist crowd, you hear that toilet paper is an industrial product which will not be available after a major collapse, so you might as well get used to it now.  Environmentalists say that it is very resource intensive for something that just gets used once and disposed of.  Some who have switched to rinsing say they like the results better.  These are good arguments and I agree in principle that at some point I will need to switch.

So why haven't I?  First and foremost, I live in town connected to a sewer system which I am obligated to pay for and to which I can only attach approved plumbing fixtures.  Mullein might make great cowboy toilet paper, but I don't dare flush it.  Health codes do limit my choices too, although composting toilets are an option. Of course, for composting toilets, toilet paper is a good source of the carbon needed to keep odors down. From the collapse standpoint, a weakness of bidets is that they require a supply of fresh water under pressure. And if you use a washcloth, you need to have a means of washing it.  So, you really have to consider your sewage system if you decide to stop using toilet paper.

But there is a much, much larger issue, one that you probably intuitively grasped at the very beginning of this article.  Toilet paper is just one small piece of the puzzle when it comes to preparing for the future.  It is relatively cheap, especially if you can get it on sale, and especially because it can have a very long shelf life.  Not only does it take time to set up a system that does not use toilet paper, it takes time to maintain it.  On the flip side, you can save some money.  What each person has to do is evaluate where to invest his or her time to get the best payback.  For me, for now, toilet paper is not the answer.

We must manage our time and choose our priorities as we make the Long Ascent.

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?

Living on the Land

Many people who are concerned with Hubbert's Mesa want to "live off the land".  It is a wonderful dream to find a place that will provide you with all your needs.  By all means, if you have the ability to do so, finding a good place to crash is well worth pursuing.  (If you're looking in western Pennsylvania, I can even help you.)

However, first and foremost, you need to realize that perfection is not possible. REAL real estate will always have something missing.  Some deficiencies can be corrected, which is all the more reason to start sooner rather than later.  Other problems are not feasible to change, you will have to decide whether it is something you can live with.  Consider your needs in their time order both when deciding where is an appropriate place to live and what projects to start with.  Also consider the kind of community you will be living in, including the neighbors' attitude and the local zoning codes.

What if you can't afford to move?  You can still do your best to live off the land you live on, like William Hunter Duncan.  You may have more to be more creative in finding solutions, but the most important advantage is that you can start doing things now, like planting a garden.   Invest in your skills today and "live on the land".  It may even help you save enough pennies that finding the perfect place becomes feasible.

The Long Ascent begins where you are right now.

Packing a Lunch

I packed a lunch today.

I packed a lunch yesterday.

I will very likely pack a lunch tomorrow.

I don't do anything fancy, usually just a sandwich with some kind of lunch meat and cheese -- ham or turkey and Swiss or American, roast beef and cheddar, garlic bologna and American -- usually with a leaf of lettuce, or a piece of fresh fruit on the side.

I pack my drinks, too.  I make a fruit punch with 3 cups each orange and grape juices, 1 cup seltzer water, and 8 cups filtered water.  I also make lemonade with 2/3 cup lemon juice, 2 teaspoons xylitol, 2 packets stevia, 4 tablespoons of organic sugar, and 7 cups water.  I freeze them in plastic drink bottles filled 80% full.  I'll pull one out and put it in my insulated lunch box the night before if I'm working in the morning or in the morning if I work in the evening.  The other I'll put in right before going to work.  That way I have one ready to drink right away, and the other stays cold the entire day.

Why am I telling you this?  In part this is a response to Joel Caris's blog post on irrationality in food choices.  In the office where I work we frequently don't have time to go get lunch.  In previous years I would get so hungry I would just grab something from the vending machine.  Consequently, I would always gain weight during our busy season.  This year, in part by making sure I have something relatively good to eat when I do get hungry, I am actually losing weight (and not spending nearly as much on junk food).

Packing a lunch is a simple act, but it makes us look forward and gets us in the habit of preparing for the future.  We are much better able to resist temptations if we have made allowances for our needs beforehand.

The Ascent will be Long, pack a lunch.

There's Always Room For Beer

As we prepare for Saint Patrick's Day, I'd like to share one of my favorite jokes with you:

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A philosophy professor set an empty jar on his desk in front of the class.

He proceeded to take a few large rocks and put them in the jar until they reached the top.

He asked the class, "Is this jar full?"  The class all agreed, the jar was full.

Then he poured in some small stones.  Again, he kept putting them in until they reached the top of the jar.

He asked the class again, "Is this jar full?"  The class all agreed, the jar was full.

Then he took some sand and carefully poured it in and shook it up until the sand had filled in all the spaces between the rocks and the stones.

He asked the class a final time, "Is this jar full?"  The class all agreed, the jar was full.

He explained, "This jar is like your life. The large rocks are the most important things in your life, like your job and your family.  You can fill up your life with just those.  The small stones are like your dear friends; they, too, can fill up your life.  The sand is like your hobbies and other interests; they will also fill up your life."

He asked, "So, class, what lesson did you learn?"  One student raised his hand, and the professor called on him.  The student came to the front of the class, pulled a beer out of his pocket, and poured it into the jar.  Then he exclaimed, "There's always room for beer!"

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The jar, like our lives, is always full.  All that matters is how we fill it.  If we filled it with beer or sand first, there will be no room for stones or rocks.  On the Long Ascent we need to make sure we make room for what is most important to us first.

A Multitude of Rs

Back in a simpler age, education was concerned with the three Rs: reading, 'riting, and 'rithmatic.  (Obviously, they weren't so concerned with spelling back then.)  The environmental movement came up with its own version of the 3 Rs: reduce, reuse, recycle.  It is a catchy phrase, but it has become trite.  People rarely think about what it actually means.  We need to carefully reconsider those 3, but in addition, I think several more are worth adding to that list.

• Refuse

If someone tries to give you something you don't want, refuse it. Even something as simple as refusing a glass of water saves the several glasses worth of water and a little soap required to wash it.


• Rethink

Before you consume something new, ask yourself if you really need it or if something else would work as well. A hyper-mileage car may be a good thing, but if you can do without any car, that is far better.


• Reduce

If you do need to use something, see if you can use less of it.


• Rent

If you are only going to use something occasionally, consider renting it. If you only have one week of vacation a year, why own a vacation home or even an RV when you can rent one instead?


• Refill

Not so long ago, when drinks came in glass bottles, it was possible to get them refilled. You still do have the option to fill your own cup with coffee and fountain drinks at many coffee houses and convenience stores.


• Reuse

Refilling bottles is an obvious way to reuse things, but other things can be used over and over even if they are normally thrown away after one use.


• Repair

Usually things don't wear out all at once. As stuff becomes more costly to produce, if something is mostly working, fixing a small broken piece becomes more worthwhile.


• Renew / Restore

Eventually things will wear down or age. When it is something that represents a major investment of materials and energy, like a house, it can be worthwhile to make it like new again.


• Return

One of the problems with being a conservationist in a consumer society is that for many of these options, there are no economies of scale for the end user.  If we were to start returning stuff we have used up to where we bought it, they would have more incentive to deal with it properly.


• Repurpose

This is basically reusing stuff, except it is for a different purpose than the original -- for example, using chopsticks for plant stakes.


• Redesign

Once consumers start returning things they have used, companies will want to rethink how they make things.  Some examples are making things that are easy to disassemble or using standard parts that can be reused if they are still good.


• Recycle

Breaking things down into their constituent materials and reusing them is not a bad option, but it is usually the last that should be considered.  Considerable time and energy has to be expended doing this -- granted, it still usually takes less than starting with virgin materials, but other options are better.


• Regenerate

This is the ultimate goal.  Sustainability sounds like a good idea, but it is not enough.  All the other Rs help minimize the damage we do and keep things going as long as we can, but there is a limit to how much of that we can do.  Focusing on regenerating our resources and world we have degraded is what will propel us upward on the Long Ascent.

Starfish

I am a major fan of Jeff Goldblum.  I have loved every movie of his I have ever seen.  Today I want to relate a story from Holy Man, which he co-starred with Eddie Murphy and Kelly Preston.  The story was told by Eddie's character.  I am, of course, paraphrasing:

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One morning a man went for a walk on a beach.  A major storm had passed through the night before, and the beach was littered with thousands of dying starfish that had been washed onshore and were now drying out in the sun.

The man came upon a young boy who was picking up the starfish one by one and tossing them back into the ocean.  The man chastised the boy, "Why are you doing that?  You're not making any difference.  There is no way you can save all these starfish before they die!"

The boy answered, "Yes, but for each starfish I save, it makes all the difference in the world."

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We face a perilous point in Hubbert's Mesa.  From our current vantage point, we can still see the possibilty of much brighter world is visible in the distant future.  We do need to keep that vision in our mind, as it will become more hidden from sight.  But the immediate future requires our attention, too.  The path ahead has many hazards, and if we lose control and tumble, it could be fatal.  We need to look to our destination when we rest, but focus on our surroundings as we proceed.

One thing we cannot do is look at what we are losing.  There is so much more than we can possibly save.  We have to block that out and concentrate on saving what we can.

On the Long Ascent, that makes all the difference in the world.

Time Order of Needs

Many financial planners say you must distinguish between "needs" and "wants" when deciding what expenses are most important.

Survivalists have a "Rule of 3" for setting priorities:

• You can survive about 3 minutes without oxygen.
• You can survive about 3 hours in extreme temperatures.
• You can survive about 3 days without water.
• You can survive about 3 weeks without food.

These correspond roughly to the physiological level of Maslow's "Hierarchy of Needs".  Sleep is another physiological need, but it doesn't fit nicely in to the above, in part because those are external.  As some point your body will likely force you to sleep; you just better not be operating heavy machinery at that time.  Some people list clothing, but that is tied in with extreme temperatures.  Sex is another physiological need, not so much for the individual as for the species.  3 decades without sex would be disastrous for the human race.

I left out the last rule of 3:

• You can survive about 3 months without companionship.  

This is a psychological need.  It is a need nonetheless, but despite the rule people can vary greatly in how long they can go without it.  Maslow categorizes psychological needs into four levels, in order: safety, love and belonging, esteem, and self-actualization.  His theory is that you need to fulfill one level before you start to satisfy the next, starting with the physiological.  One problem is this theory does not explain such conditions as anorexia nervosa, where a physical need is denied to fulfill a psychological need.  Another important criticism is that Maslow's hierarchy is culturally biased.

This brings me to where I disagree with financial planners and why this entry is not titled "Needs vs. Wants".  Except for the physiological/psychological distinction, these really are the same kinds of things. "Need vs. want" is just a matter of degree.  In the long run, any system which does not fulfill all of these is incomplete.

While a strict hierarchy does not explain things well, putting our psychological needs in some kind of order does make sense.  I think it a worthy exercise to extend the analysis that is simple with physical needs, namely how long can people survive with those needs unmet?  Quite frankly, I don't have these answers.

What I do know is that making sure all our needs are met, starting with the most urgent, is critical to not losing our way or falling down on the Long Ascent.

Tom Brown's "Grandfather"

When I was going to college in California, I took a survival course from Christopher Nyerges.  One day he related to us the story of Tom Brown, Jr.  He gained fame for his skills as a tracker.  One interviewer mistakenly reported that he ran a survival school, and he was flooded with requests, so he did start teaching survival skills.  His story, "The Tracker", is a fine read.

Today, however, I want to discuss part of the story of his teacher, who was called "Grandfather" even from a young age.  One particular valley plays an important role three times in his life.  When he was growing up, he would frequently visit that pristine valley to play.  In the middle of his life, decades later, he discovered that a mining camp had been erected.  The natural beauty had been devastated by all the human activity.  Finally, as an old man, he visited the valley one last time, when he discovered that the intervening decades had erased much of the evidence of the exploitation.  Except for a few scraps here and there, the valley was starting to look much as it did in his youth.

There is, of course, a point beyond which nature will never recover.  After the last tree on Easter Island was cut down, they never came back.  But as long as something remains, the natural world has a remarkable ability to heal itself, given time.

One of our most immediate tasks on the Long Ascent is ensuring that enough of the wilderness is preserved so that healing can take place.

Class vs. Income

Recently in the United States there has been much talk about class warfare.  As disturbing as the concept is, I am more concerned about a fundamental distinction that has been lost in modern America: the difference between class and income.

This is due in large part to the success of the US in allowing people to change their circumstances.  Class used to have a far different meaning.  When you were born into the slave class in nineteenth century America, not only did you remain a slave for the rest of your life, but your children were similarly condemned.  If you were born into the aristocracy in sixteenth century England, you remained an aristocrat, no matter how much a fool or scoundrel you were.

These class distinctions were maintained by law, and thanks to the struggles of those who came before us, they are largely gone.  The term "middle class" still exists, but the way it is used now, people only mean "middle income", between "rich" and "poor".  The distinction between them is rather arbitrary; for example, "the poor" are those who earn less than the "poverty level".  This arbitrariness makes it easy to go from rich to poor and possible to go from poor to rich.

Even though we don't have the same kind of legally enforced class system as in the past, I think it is still a useful concept.  We still have mental and cultural barriers that keep people in their same circumstances.  I define the middle class as those who work for a living; the lower class does not work, and the upper class has others work for them.  As a further gradation, the upper middle class work for themselves, and the lower middle class work for someone else.  This is a completely separate dimension from wealth and poverty; each class has rich and poor members.  The importance is that members within each class have more interests in common than they do with people of equal income in other classes.  For example, the lower middle class still has to show up for work every day, whether they are flipping burgers or starring in movies.

It is important to understand that no class is better than the other.  All are necessary, or at least unavoidable.  (Even if we work until the day we die, no one works from the day they are born.)  Each class requires different strengths.  We just need to think clearly about our circumstances.

If you are confused about which class you fit in, you can easily get lost on the Long Ascent.

What is the Long Ascent?

Imagine a world...

... where no one is fat;

... where everyone is fit;

... where no one dies of heart disease or diabetes;

... where everyone out of diapers has meaningful work;

... where no one wastes his or her time on mindless drivel;

... where everyone keeps learning for their entire life;

... where no one is very poor or very rich;

... where everyone has their basic material needs covered.

Some of these results will occur naturally.

Some of these will require a tremendous amount of effort.

Some of these will occur because the only alternative is extinction.

It will be a long, hard climb, but the sooner we start the Long Ascent, the faster we get there.

"The future promises us lives as humans were meant to live them — free, respected as persons, respected as peers, subject to none. It promises us a true community — something most of us have never really experienced. It promises a mind-boggling diversity of belief, tradition, culture and lifestyle." -- Jason Godesky, Thirty Theses