December 6. Just spent a week in Mexico. I've heard some buzz about Americans moving there to flee hard times, and I wonder if they know something I don't, or if I know something they don't: the Mexican nation-state is collapsing, and it seems likely to get awfully hot.
We were staying in La Paz, a city of 200,000 in southern Baja California. If you want to roll the dice on global cooling, you could hardly find a better combination of warm temperatures, empty beaches, low prices, and nice people. If you're looking for a smaller town, check out Todos Santos on the other side of the peninsula, and for something more cosmopolitan, I'm told that Guadalajara has a large and thriving gringo expatriate community.
While I was down there I read David Holmgren's book Future Scenarios, and he makes a good point about one advantage Mexicans have over Americans: they're a lot more mentally adaptable. His example is that hardly anyone who owns a house in Mexico has insurance, because they're not afraid to lose everything and start over. Of course, that resiliency is something we can all work on. Just in a week, I met four different American couples who had sold most of their stuff and gone permanently on the road, or the waves. Most impressive were two women from Oregon, both over 60, who are living on a 35 foot sailboat.
Also, the Baja California climate gave me a better appreciation of permaculture. On my own land, the difference between good and bad management is not that great. Even if I do everything wrong, bushes and trees will eventually grow. But down there, the difference is orders of magnitude. They have warmth and sunlight all year, but because of bad soil and long dry spells, the main plants are cacti, and big patches of ground are lifeless. Just building topsoil and keeping it moist would make any plot of land incredibly productive. And yet, the normal practice is to rake up piles of brush and burn them. If they just made one big pile and threw some water on it, it would turn into great topsoil, which they could then use to grow more biomass, and get a topsoil-building feedback loop.
December 8. Destroyed US town a model of eco-living as it rebuilds. Greensburg Kansas was 95% destroyed by a tornado, and is rebuilding with rainwater harvesting, LED streetlights, and wind and geothermal energy. I know this is still industrial-green, but it's a big step in the right direction. Maybe in 20 years, some destroyed town will rebuild with rocket heating stoves and food forests.
December 11. Two nice pieces by a long-time reader, about Unschooling, and Unworking. This bit is especially relevant right now:
Back when my husband had health insurance, we were appalled at how much we were spending on this "benefit." We could never afford to go to the doctor because we couldn't afford the deductible and co-payments. After keeping track of expenses, we realized we were spending thousands of dollars a year on insurance. We quickly canceled it and then were able to go to the doctor when we needed to see one.
December 14. Just over the last few weeks, it seems like America has turned a corner... a vertical corner. Our daily actions are the same, but on the level of mind, or spirit, we've dropped off a cliff. You can see it on the left, where the attitude toward Obama has flipped from excitement to disgust. You can see it on the right, where only a few elderly people still look like they're making arguments, and everyone else looks like they're having a seizure. And you can see it in the conspiracy crowd, who are telling increasingly ridiculous stories that this is all part of a plan, because the alternative is too troubling.
It is said that Obama is wearing a mask, being a deceiver, as if he carefully pretended to be a progressive activist for a quarter of a century because a time traveler from the future told him that would get him elected president in 2008 so he could pursue his secret right wing globalist agenda. "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss" -- but it's hard to imagine two presidents more different than Obama and Bush. The fact that the country is moving the same direction under each of them should tell us something else: the president is not the boss. Obama has never worn a mask -- Obama is the mask, and not a very good one. It has never been more obvious that America is an ossified dying empire with a suicidal inertia that no leader or movement can stop. If Sarah Palin, Dennis Kucinich, or Carrot Top were president, the system that the president pretends to run would still be bailing out banks and insurance companies, escalating wars, hiding atrocities, and generally chugging along to its ruin.
What would happen if you swapped out the bank executives, the generals, the billionaires? Nothing. It doesn't matter who you plug into the role of dog catcher -- the dog catcher still has to catch dogs, and every role in a domination system must channel domination. Ultimately there is no boss. At the top of the pyramid sits the logic of the pyramid itself. And that logic is basically a big fire that consumes everything and finally burns out.
It is said that the elite want a global government. They would also like to fart strawberries. If you think the elite get everything they want, stop pretending to oppose them and admit that you worship them as gods. Did the rulers of ancient Rome get a global government? The smart elites are already building their lifeboats, as you should be. Kunstler said it best: in a few years the government will be lucky if it can even answer the telephone.
It is said that climate change can enable a global government by uniting all of humanity against a common enemy. But climate change is not an enemy. If it were, right wingers would believe in it. An enemy is something that you get angry at and go violently destroy. Climate change calls for us to love strangers and animals and make sacrifices to help them. That's why our angry chimp tribe species cannot possibly stop it. Instead, we need to prepare to ride it out.
And then what? This will not be the final empire, because three of the things that empires feed on -- topsoil, forests, and human foolishness -- all regenerate, one of them very quickly. It is said that we are "evolving", and it's true that we have gained blue eyes and the ability to digest cow milk. But if we're evolving resistance to large repressive systems, not on the level of culture that blows away with the wind, but on a deeper level, then we're doing it so slowly that it's going to take us thousands of years to get anywhere.
A thousand years is not such a long time. Here's something to cheer you up, written about 2300 years ago in Ecclesiastes chapter 9:
7 Go thy way, eat thy bread with joy, and drink thy wine with a merry heart; for God now accepteth thy works.
8 Let thy garments be always white; and let thy head lack no ointment.
9 Live joyfully with the wife whom thou lovest all the days of the life of thy vanity, which he hath given thee under the sun, all the days of thy vanity: for that is thy portion in this life, and in thy labor which thou takest under the sun.
10 Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest.
11 I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favor to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.
12 For man also knoweth not his time: as the fishes that are taken in an evil net, and as the birds that are caught in the snare; so are the sons of men snared in an evil time, when it falleth suddenly upon them.
December 18. The other day I posted a link about white skin being an adaptation to vitamin D deficiency in high-latitude grain eaters. Then Emily suggested something similar and mind-blowing: suppose malnutrition causes greed. It makes sense that malnutrition would make us greedy about food, and that greedy feeling could carry over to other things. I'm sure we can find exceptions, but there could still be a strong correlation, and as far as I know it's never been investigated. Also it's important to remember that neither wealth nor obesity necessarily means a person is getting the right nutrients. In a culture where unhealthful food is fashionable, rich people will be malnourished, and if the government subsidizes food with high calories and low nutrients, poor people will be both fat and malnourished.