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Off the keyboard of Geoffrey Chia

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Published on The Doomstead Diner on January 21, 2017

Discuss this article at the Doomsteading Table inside the Diner

Erratum from “Why you need to set up an off-grid Rural Homestead” part 1:

"Consider this carbon neutral scenario…The current atmospheric GHG concentrations today of more than 480ppm CO2 equivalent …will still commit us to around 4 degrees C global average temperature rise and around 25 metres sea level rise in the long term (perhaps 80 years)" should be corrected to … will still commit us to around 4 degrees C global average temperature rise in the medium term (perhaps 80 years) and around 25 metres sea level rise in the longer term (the "locked in" ice melt which eventually raises sea level by 25 metres will take much longer than 80 years to complete).

Why you need to set up an off-grid Rural Homestead part 2

by Geoffrey Chia, January 2017

A minority of people in the rich countries, the semisapients, accept that we urgently need to radically transform our unsustainable profligate lifestyles, but still avoid taking any meaningful action. They prefer Dr Suzuki's message: if only we vote Green, get our country to transform to 100% renewable energy, then things (hopefully) may turn out fine. This will almost certainly not happen because the semisapient voters are a tiny minority nowhere near the critical mass needed to vote in transformative governments. The semisapients are overwhelmingly outnumbered by the clueless sheeple and the knuckle dragging rednecks with the “drill baby drill” mantra. More progressive nations such as Germany and France are far more conscious of environmental issues, but are now faced with huge, destabilising, unwelcome distractions, viz: the influx of hundreds of thousands of desperate MENA refugees who have fled their homelands which were destroyed by the failed attempts of the USA to bring about "regime change" and control the MENA fossil fuel resources 3 . The destruction of those MENA states has provoked hatred from many of that heritage and thus hugely aggravated blowback terrorism, for which there is no end in sight.

If, despite using irrefutable evidence-based arguments that our planetary future will be dire, we are still unable to persuade the semisapients to establish rural homesteads for themselves, how else can we encourage them to embark on this undeniably difficult task? Especially since their city lives may be quite comfortable at the moment? People will certainly resort to desperate and futile measures when their urban neighbourhoods collapse, but by then it will be too late for them. How else can we motivate the semisapients to act now so that they will be well prepared when the crunch comes?

Some thoughts:

The pursuit of a more satisfying lifestyle and of happiness

I confess I am addicted to one particular genre of reality television i.e. shows about people building or choosing a tiny house so they can embark on a new, more satisfying low consumption lifestyle. There are many good ideas about tiny house design to glean from those programs, but more than that, I always feel a warm glow when I watch the exuberant joy those folks radiate when they inspect their new tiny house for the first time. Some may be downsizing from McMansions, yet all seem genuinely happy to live according to their basic needs and not according to contrived desires borne of envy, fabricated by the mainstream media.

What are the ingredients of happiness? Let us exclude the views of psychopaths, who enjoy killing and bullying people, from this consideration. Sociologists tell us that for most ordinary people, these are the ingredients which comprise happiness:

Basic material needs and comfort (clean water, food, shelter, good sanitation, physical security) must be met, beyond which there is no evidence that greater wealth leads to more happiness. Living in a McMansion does not offer happiness, only larger spaces to clean.

Good health, for which good nutrition and regular physical activity are necessary.

Good relationships, not just with family and friends, but within a harmonious community, and making meaningful contributions to that community. The person who volunteers in a soup kitchen for the homeless invariably gains more happiness than the billionaire who makes yet another million from his newest corporate acquisition. In general we gain more happiness from giving (to appreciative and deserving people) than receiving. This explains why Bill Gates quit his role in Microsoft to spend all his time on philanthropy.

Interaction with Nature. We are biophilic creatures. This explains why urban families feel the need to bring their kids to the park or beach at least once per week. Children need to learn that food and water come from the land and from Nature, otherwise they will grow up to be delusional fantasists whose eyes are always glued to computer screens and thoughts are completely divorced from the real, natural world (and hence do not care about the destruction of the real, natural world – which is leading to their own destruction)

A sense of meaning or purpose, which varies among individuals according to their inclinations. This may take the form of social, intellectual, musical, artistic or other creative endeavour e.g. fine cooking. Unfortunately one type of person who may not be able to pursue their passion in life on a permaculture homestead is the elite sportsperson. They need urban facilities and services to attain and maintain such elite levels. Having said that, when all the urban facilities collapse, the city based elite sportsperson will die. Being an elite sportsperson will not help them die any later than the average person, although they will certainly die fitter than the average person.

I believe a carefully planned rural permaculture community can offer the above and thereby provide happiness for its inhabitants. A good internet connection (for as long as the system allows) means that even folks in the most remote areas need not be deprived of the best intellectual, musical or artistic resources in the world, including the ability to visit virtual museums and virtual zoos. They can also interact with people on the other side of the world who may have similar rare esoteric tastes e.g. ancient Sanskrit poetry. Networking by teleconference or skype is far, far preferable to burning jetfuel to attend meetings. Homesteaders will need to preserve their own archive of hard copy reference documents so that when the internet and their computers eventually go down, there will continue to exist disseminated repositories of valuable printed legacy information around the world. Important knowledge and skills can still be passed on.

Financial and Economic reasons

We were born into this growth dependent financial-economic system and it is all we know. We were told we must work within the system to earn fiat currency to purchase the goods and services we need to live well. We were brainwashed into believing that more is better and we should sign up to 30 year mortgages for capacious McMansions. We were bombarded with advertising telling us to "use money we don't have, to buy things we don't need, to impress people we don't like". When terror strikes, go shopping. This system appeared to function satisfactorily in decades gone by, when the world was on the upslope of the Hubbert curve. Now we are on the Hubbert downslope, real economic growth has stopped and contraction has started. With zero or negative interest on savings, but ongoing compound interest payable on loans, with flat or declining wages, it is now impossible for many people to pay off their debts. They are lifetime debt slaves 4 . This economy is a Ponzi scheme and like any Ponzi scheme, those canny enough to exit at the peak will benefit, the rest will lose their shirts. These are powerful arguments for the semisapients to sell their assets, get rid of debt, buy rural land with a good fresh water supply and establish their off-grid homestead where they can provide for themselves and participate in the local exchange economy. Those who lack sufficient individual financial resources can join with their peers to purchase or lease land-in-common. They can then park their mobile tiny houses or RVs on their jointly owned land and live in their own off-grid community. Those who lack the money to invest in a land owning partnership can acquire the skills to make themselves indispensable to such a community (horticulture, plumbing, electrical, welding, building, carpentry skills etc). They need to make themselves known to the landowners and land cooperatives now. How much does a good second hand RV fitted with composting toilet and 12V electrical system using solar panels cost? A damn sight less than a McMansion. Not to mention ongoing McMansion maintenance, utilities and fees. After TSHTF, life on the homesteads will be egalitarian. All residents in theory should be considered equal in dignity, but not everyone in practice will be equal in value. Even if you are not a partner in the land ownership, if you can offer the community skills to grow food or deliver good drinking water sustainably, you will be considered more valuable than the land owning rocket scientist or brain surgeon or cardiologist who no longer has the high tech infrastructure to practice their skills. Well before we reach that stage however, there are tremendous psychological benefits to getting rid of debt now: a sense of freedom, less mental stress and improved interpersonal relationships.

The Moral Imperative

Living on an off-grid permaculture homestead can reduce your resource consumption and waste production by more than 90% compared with the average fossil fuel addict in the industrial world. More people going off-grid will ease demand on an already overstressed central grid. Gandhi put it most succinctly, "be the change you want to see in the World". Nuff said.

Timing is everything

Some people claim that positive, inspirational arguments are more effective than negative, fear based arguments to motivate people. That opinion is not based on any evidence whatsoever, only a warm fuzzy mindset. Humans evolved to react towards real or perceived immediate threats with "fight or flight" responses. That trait promoted survival in our hunter-gatherer past. Apart from immediate threats, most humans tend to be lazy, complacent, passive and inert. We tend to choose the easy options for short term gratification. Few choose to expend blood, sweat and tears pursuing lofty long term goals. Negative messages about real or perceived threats can and do work to galvanise the public. They are the most effective propaganda tool of governments. Like any tool, negative messages can be used ethically (when based on truth to save lives e.g. public health anti-tobacco campaigns) or criminally (when based on deceit to rob and kill innocent people e.g. Nazi anti-Jewish propaganda). The chickenshit warmongering US Neoconartists were very effective in promoting the invasion of Iraq by brandishing the fearsome bogeyman of WMDs, even though it was utterly bogus. However, that unjustifiable invasion could not have been sold to the US public if 9/11 had not occurred beforehand. Hence timing is everything. The Neoconartists used the psychological trauma of 9/11 to promote the invasion of Iraq, even though the two were completely unrelated.

I suspect the events that will eventually motivate the semisapients to act will indeed be negative factors. When adverse events start to affect them personally, they will realise that the limits to growth have come knocking at their door. Some people need a short, sharp, shock to get them off their butts. Different people have different "road to Damascus" moments. For some it is when they see a piano above their head suspended by a fraying cable. For others it is when the piano falls on their head 5 .

Survival of the species

Many Extinction pundits, including Guy McPherson himself, frequently conflate the question "will humans go extinct?" with the question "should humans go extinct?" despite the two being very different questions, the latter being heavily value laden. The fanatical NBL hangers-on in particular, the “true believers”, are so infused with their loathing of humanity and so fixated with their rabidly held view that humans should go extinct, that they vehemently insist that humans will go extinct in the near term, in order to spread dismay and hopelessness far and wide (hence they troll every “collapsitarian” blog). If they can demoralise and demotivate others from attempting to save themselves, such failure to prepare for the coming collapse will indeed cause those dismayed to perish, thus creating a self fulfilling prophecy. Those toxic NBL ideologues are so hell bent on perpetrating their agenda of schadenfreude, because that is the only way they can feel any sense of power or influence in the world, being useless no-hopers themselves. I strongly oppose such malevolent nihilism, which I consider downright mischievous, even evil. Whereas I have a dim view of humanity in general, I know some people who are strongly ethical, honest, honourable, reliable, hardworking, kind, generous and decent and who must be saved and must be encouraged. Readers of this article will know similar people. They are the best seed for future human survival. Sentience is rare in this Universe, wisdom even rarer and in my view must be preserved. That is my value judgement. Humanity's only hope is that a small number of sapients may emerge on the other side of this near-extinction bottleneck to create truly sustainable and wise human societies that live in harmony with the environment. I agree it is possible there may be no survivors in the Northern hemisphere before the end of this century. None. Complete human extinction is also possible and I have no problem with someone expressing a personal view that NTHE may be 99.9% likely based on the environmental devastation facing this planet. But nobody is entitled to promote a message that human extinction is guaranteed unless they can prove they are clairvoyant. Our extinction is not a forgone conclusion, it is not a certainty, so long as you can demonstrate there is just one feasible scenario in which human survival may be possible. Just because McPherson could not imagine such a feasible scenario, does not mean that human extinction is guaranteed. It just means that McPherson has a limited imagination. I previously described such a feasible scenario, which does not require complex technology, in which humans may migrate to a thawing Antarctica and survive an 8 or even 10 degree C global average temperature rise, a scenario which McPherson could not logically flaw, and hence chose to disregard. He then portrayed me as a nasty villain who had upset the delicate sensibilities of his emotionally fragile Extinctionist disciples on NBL by contradicting and ridiculing their stupid ideology of utter nihilism. If human beings are forced to migrate to the Southern tip of South America as global warming spirals out of control, they will. If human beings are forced to make the sea crossing to a thawing Antarctica, bringing along the necessary seeds, saplings and livestock required to settle there, they will. The survival imperative is strong.

Two Metaphors:

Some say that setting up a remote homestead and giving up on mainstream society is a selfish act. However, if you have been sounding the alarm for ages that our house is on fire, but have utterly failed to persuade the Establishment to quell the flames which now rage out of control, surely the only remaining option is to advise people to leave the collapsing house and for yourself to do the same? What conceivable purpose does it serve for you to burn to death in "solidarity" with the clueless sheeple who scorn you, especially if you are fortunate enough to be near an exit? Furthermore, action speaks louder than words and your action may encourage a few semisapients to follow you out to safety.

Here is another metaphor. You can sound the alert about the sinking Titanic, but you cannot force other passengers onto the lifeboats. The evidence that our ship is sinking is irrefutable: it is listing at an alarming angle, the meatballs have rolled off the dinner plates and water is lapping at our ankles. The people at the high, dry, end of the ship remain comfortable and reject the idea of moving onto a small, cold, dark, bouncy lifeboat which lacks a live orchestra (the orchestra continues to play on the high end of the main deck). They believe the denialists, who confidently declare there is no hole in the hull and insist that present troubles are only a temporary phenomenon ("economists say that current difficulties are just part of a normal cycle and it is merely a matter of time before global growth is restored"). The optimists say a huge hole in the hull does indeed exist but it can be repaired if we just vote for leaders who will fix it with sticky tape and chewing gum ("elect a government that will transform your society to 100% renewable energy"). The fantasists say that aliens will descend from outer space and teleport us to a techno-utopia just before the Titanic goes under ("science fictiony technology will save us"). The supernaturalists say that Jesus will descend from outer space and teleport us to heaven just before the Titanic goes under ("the second coming is nigh"). The nihilists assert with clairvoyant certainty that all the lifeboats, every single one, will sink or fail to reach any shore, therefore it is futile to board any lifeboat and everyone must passively wait to drown or perhaps kill themselves beforehand (but nevertheless should "live lives of excellence" – whatever that means).

Very few passengers are boarding the lifeboats, hence you will not be depriving anyone of a space if you are lucky enough to have access to one.

So review your options and make your choice. Not every rural homestead will succeed in the long term, but some will. Not trying will guarantee failure.

G. Chia, January 2017

PS: If you live in South Eastern Australia (or plan to move here soon), have similar views and values, are physically fit with a cooperative personality and have practical skills to offer, please send your details to RE who can forward them to me.

PPS: footnotes to the red reference numbers will appear as part 3 of this essay triptych