Preparing For Change

A Hopi Elder Speaks

“You have been telling the people that this is the Eleventh Hour, now
you must go back and tell the people that this is the Hour. And there
are things to be considered . . .

Where are you living?
What are you doing?
What are your relationships?
Are you in right relation?
Where is your water?
Know your garden.
It is time to speak your Truth.
Create your community.
Be good to each other.
And do not look outside yourself for the leader.”

Then he clasped his hands together, smiled, and said, “This could be
a good time!”

“There is a river flowing now very fast. It is so great and
swift that there are those who will be afraid. They will try to hold
on to the shore. They will feel they are torn apart and will suffer
greatly.

“Know the river has its destination. The elders say we must let
go of the shore, push off into the middle of the river, keep our eyes
open, and our heads above water. And I say, see who is in there with
you and celebrate. At this time in history, we are to take nothing
personally, Least of all ourselves. For the moment that we do, our
spiritual growth and journey comes to a halt.

“The time for the lone wolf is over. Gather yourselves! Banish
the word struggle from you attitude and your vocabulary. All that we
do now must be done in a sacred manner and in celebration.

“We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.”
an unnamed Hopi elder
Hopi Nation
Oraibi, Arizona

For a long time I have wanted to write a letter to my friends and family about my views on the state of the world. Now seems the time.  I’ve written a lot of things in my life, but I consider this letter to be perhaps the most important.

I’m concerned with the state that the world is in. While I ultimately have hope for the future, I believe that our society and lifestyles are going to majorly change in the near future (by this I mean in the next 1-10 years).  I’ve been watching things unravel closely for a long time and it seems like things are happening faster all the time.

When a person is dying of disease, systems start to fail one by one. As each one weakens, it affects all of the other systems, which also start to fail creating an accelerating feedback loop. Everything starts to fail faster and faster until abruptly the person dies.

This is what seems to be happening to both our civilization as well as life on earth right NOW.  Because it is happening over a period of years rather than days or hours it can seem as though very little  is happening unless you are paying attention.  There’s an old adage that to boil a frog you put the heat on slowly and it won’t notice until it is too late. As far as I can see the very underpinnings of our civilization and biosphere are being hollowed out at a rapid pace.

If I am sounding like the situation is bleak it’s because it is.  An honest dialogue about the true state of life on earth (including human life) is a real downer.  If you read the scientific journals there is a growing consensus that our environment and civilization will be facing catastrophic losses in the coming years. You can look in journals ranging from botany and zoology to earth science to climatology and you will find some pretty freaked out scientists. Many scientists believe we are in the midst of the “6^th global extinction” (http://bit.ly/h97V9k)   Global warming is causing chaos in weather patterns (http://bit.ly/gIjc3U)….it goes on and is no longer a subject solely for fringe web sites, but respectable scientific publications.

The list of potential (and in some cases inevitable) catastrophes awaiting us include overpopulation, climate change, economic depression, peak oil, mega-viruses, earthquakes, nuclear war (or nuclear reactor failure!), epidemic diseases, solar storms…there is no doubt that we are facing plenty of very serious threats that could drastically effect us in our lifetime and possibly sooner than you might think.

Of more immediate threat is the economic situation. As a freelancer, I have personally seen my business decline because I do work for other small businesses, many of which are also experiencing financial difficulties. There are “tent cities” sprouting up all over the place as more and more people are evicted from their homes. Don’t believe a word of what the government says about unemployment rates. The real numbers are much higher and don’t take into account that most new jobs being created are either part time and/or low paying.  Gas is up over $.80 a gallon since January 1^st of this year. This is going to have a HUGE impact on the price of pretty much everything. You have already probably felt the sticker shock at your grocery store..expect this trend to continue….The poor shape of the economy and its bleak outlook is pretty far from being fringe. You will find many articles in mainstream magazine talking about it. See http://lat.ms/bzPJ2J for an example.

But in spite of all of this I have hope.

It has been said that we create our own reality through our thoughts and I truly believe this. But I do believe that it also takes our actions to change things. I have been told by a few people when I bring up subjects like this that I am contributing to “negative thinking”. The idea being that if we all envision a beautiful world for ourselves that is what will happen. My reply to that is if you are going out and  it is raining do you simply visualize not getting wet or do you put on a raincoat? Which will keep you drier? Of course you had to have the idea (i.e. visualize) a way to protect yourself from the rain first, but then you had to follow through with action.  This is the truth behind “The Secret”. It is about the marriage of positive thoughts with positive action. And sometimes there are forces beyond your control that can cause havoc and we need to get good at navigating them through positive thinking AND  action.

I can see a great spiritual awakening happening during this time. More and more people seem to be “waking up”. Whether this is caused by some kind of cosmic astrological 2012 alignment (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwysQiRaRgE) , angelic beings, ufo’s or just plain luck, it seems as if there is a great stirring in the pool of mass consciousness. And perhaps people might just wake up in time.  Interestingly enough, UFO sighting have been on an extreme rise lately! (http://bit.ly/hlvxmk)

But I believe that even if angelic beings or UFO’s do not show up to magically fix things, we can still pull it off. Like the guy from the X files “I want to believe”. It would rock my world if we all suddenly achieve mass enlightenment or some advanced being come to help us in the nick of time. And I believe these are very real possibilities.

But another even greater possibility for me is that we all become superheroes and save the day ourselves (exciting!). It is seductive to think that a messiah or miraculous change will come and while that may happen it may also be up to us to save the day. So why not get started now? I love this very inspiring video by David Wolfe: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSHIIGSR0BU

Of course saving the day can mean many things. The one I consider the most probable is the scenario where the infrastructure and economy of our civilization rapidly deteriorates and a new culture rises to take its place. A civilization that has respect and love for the earth at its core. The book “The Fifth Sacred Thing” by Starhawk is a beautiful, yet realistic  vision of this type of society (and I highly recommend reading it). I also recommend the book “The Garden Planet” which summarizes this theme very well.

This potential new civilization would likely not be perfect and would have its own set of problems. But these would likely be minor compared to what we live with now and most importantly it would not be destructive to the biosphere. Animal and plant life on the earth would flourish once again.

Wouldn’t you love to live in a world where the forests were full of wildlife, the waters were filled with fish, the sky filled with birds and the earth covered with wild edibles, herbs and flowers? Once it was like that, but humans kept growing in population and at the same time “progress” in learning to extract the earth’s resources more and more efficiently. Now we live lives of relative luxury but at the cost of our very ecosystem. And when the ecosystem is gone, so are we.

It is still possible to save the ecosystem, but it would require us to radically downsize our lifestyle. And if this is not done voluntarily, it will be done by force sooner or later (I’m betting sooner). Let’s face it…the vast majority of people think nothing at all about ecology and living sustainably and most of the ones who do think of it occasionally believe that buying recycled toilet paper and going to an earth day festival is doing enough to “help the cause”.  It isn’t by a long shot….we  (all of us) need to radically curb our consumption based lifestyles. And it seems no one wants to hear this message.

Of course many have thought about changing their lifestyle, but feel it is futile. After all, if no one else changes his/her lifestyle, the earth is doomed anyway so we might as well get our share!  I must admit that sometimes feel this way myself. Voluntarily I live a relatively simple non-consumerist lifestyle compared to the average American. I’ve bought a small piece of land and plan on growing plenty of food on it and living as self sufficiently and sustainably as I can.  I buy as little new as possible. And always looking for ways to lessen my impact on the earth.

But this does not mean that I have extricated myself completely from our culture. I still drive a car, use computers, electricity and other modern amenities. While I use resources carefully and with consciousness they are hard to give up completely! And do we even need to? I believe it is possible for us all to live comfortable lives, enjoy some modern innovations and technologies and travel, but we need to have a very different definition of what a “comfortable life” is.

Living comfortably by our cultures standards means to some being able to buy lots of stuff and having all of the latest gadgets. To some it means being able to travel all over the world by airplane. To others it means living in a large modern house, having so-called financial security and being able to eat out whenever they want.

Most of us live pretty luxurious lives….Hot water on demand, automobiles,  instant light at the flip of a switch..and amazing gadgetry like ipads!. What Pharaoh dreamed of these? Of course, most of us have to work, but lets face it our life is pretty easy compared to a lot of the worlds population. For most of us, our worlds are filled with the miracles of technology that we take for granted, and invisibly give us lives of ease and comfort. But as oil and other resources run out so will they.

I believe that we can keep some of these luxuries and still save the ecosystem, but on a much smaller scale than we do now. Most people would be quite astonished if they realized just how much fossil fuels and earth resources the average person uses on a daily basis to give us these luxuries.

Our earth now has almost  7 BILLION people on it! This 3 BILLION more than when I was a kid and I’m not that old. Think about that for a moment. Due to modern communication many of these 7 billion are getting exposed to our luxurious western lifestyles for the first time and want to get their share of it too, but the earth cannot support this.  Overpopulation is a serious issue. Take a look at this chart to get a quick idea of how much population has grown in just 300 years: http://bit.ly/e3iB3r

All of this is leading to what I believe to be the most likely probability for our near future.  That is that I believe a combination of some of the possibilities we’ve covered as well as some we couldn’t even imagine now will happen. I DO believe that humans are evolving rapidly into a higher consciousness and making an evolutionary leap. That is often how biological evolution happens….very little for long periods of time and then a sudden burst. Who knows what might happen?

I also believe that it is very possible for us to experience rapid climate change with growing inhospitable weather….a very serious problem (http://bit.ly/lr8yH5).  Did you know that last month was a record breaker for the number of tornados in the United States? Or that large quantities of methane trapped in the earth are beginning to be released due to ice melting? Many scientists are concerned that this could greatly accelerate global warming (http://bit.ly/jnrPIW). There are plenty of strange weather anomalies like this happening and it is likely that our atmosphere and weather will be quite different in the years ahead.

I also believe that our civilization is descending rapidly into a very different, chaotic and for most, an uncomfortable place to live in. Economic depression or a complete collapse is almost certainly on the horizon…even the mainstream business magazines openly discuss it.  (http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article25418.html).

We are all relying on the system to keep going. But what if it doesn’t? This may be uncomfortable to think about, but what if you were suddenly jobless….your friends were jobless….the supermarkets ran out of food, gas is $18 gallon (when you can get it), people cannot get their prescription medication or for that matter cigarettes, coffee, alcohol, sugar or other addictions we take for granted.  People can’t pay their rent/mortgage and the streets are filled with homeless people. The media has been completely taken over by the government who round up any protestors, label them as “terrorists” and put them in massive detention camps. Is this really just a dark fantasy? I believe that our world could change drastically and far more quickly than you might think.

I grant you this is a worst case scenario (actually I could easily get worse…. a tyrannical dictator comes to power, massive plagues sweep the land, earthquakes and tectonic shifts become a daily occurrence…well you get the idea). But it is not a stretch to say that something like an economic collapse is very possible…and given our current course, if things do not change it is very plausible we could at the very least end up with lives FAR for more difficult than we have now. And I believe that this kind of scenario could all happen much faster than we’d like to think.

I do not spend my days reading “doomer” web sites, but there was a time when I did. I read all about the absolutely CRAZY things that are reported to be happening all over the world. HAARP, Black Ops, Chemtrails and more. Reading about all of this did not make me feel good or happy.  I finally came to the conclusion that I would be better to spend my time and energy on finding solutions than on staring down the barrel of the gun …And so I did. I started studying permaculture and sutainable living….But I never forgot many of these “conspiracies” and believe that many if not most of them contain a lot of truth as scary as that might be. But this is not my focus.

For me I’m getting practical about preparations and taking care of my basics. I feel that shelter, food, water and health care are our main essentials and so I want to feel confident that I can provide for these basics for my family without relying on the “system”. My partner Kala and I have bought our own “house”…granted it’s just a yurt, but it’s cozy and keeps out the weather and most importantly we own it and can’t be evicted from it.

We bought a small piece of land outside of Asheville. It’s way out in the mountains and the area is filled with people trying to live sustainably off their land.  We  have already started our garden on our land and moving on to it next month either in a tent or our yurt if we get it down here before then.

Although I am unsure about what the future will bring, I have hope that if the worst does happen, I will be relatively well prepared in covering my basics (food, water, shelter) and be able to help my family and friends.

My message and reason for writing this is simple in its essence: “Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.”. It’s tempting to think that positive thinking, technology or our own intelligence is going to bail us out, but in my view this is unlikely.  There is a good chance that we are going to have to bail ourselves out. And this starts with having basic preparations for you and your loved ones for food, water and shelter that are independent of the “system”.  When these basic needs are met you will also be in a much better position to help out your friends and others if you needed to.

This viewpoint does not sell many newspapers and I have personally found that it is a very unpopular subject at parties. It is uncomfortable to realize that your whole society that you take for granted is a fragile system. But I urge you to do some of your own research, Even though the mainstream media goes out of its way to avoid the subject, you can find some very sobering articles in popular magazine and newspapers if you look for them.  And of course there are plenty of sites/blogs devoted to the subject. For this essay, I have tried to use more unbiased mainstream sources.

There are plenty of great information web sites.  Some of my favorite web sites on the subject are:

http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/ (perhaps the best blog on the subject…the archives are excellent reading)

http://collapse.reddit.com (an ever changing collection of links of interest)

http://cluborlov.com/ – Great Blog from someone who witness the collapse of the soviet union

http://www.camse.org/andy/oil/Soviet_Advice.pdf Post-Soviet Lessons for a Post-American Century

http://www.chrismartenson.com/ – Great all around info site

 

I strongly suggest that you research enough to become convinced that you need to act now to start preparing and then switch over your research and energies into doing what you can to do what you can to prepare. My advice in what you can do to prepare is in part two.  It basically involves taking personal responsibility to make sure that your basis needs (shelter, water, food) are covered in the event of an extended depression or emergency. If you have a family especially,  you should seriously consider some preparing. Think of it as an insurance policy.

Most importantly if you really do take the time to look into this and become convinced do not be paralyzed by fear. Instead take a course of action and do something every day to prepare.  This will involve concerted time and effort and a change of lifestyle for most.  I can tell you from my personal experience that it is not as hard as you might think to embrace living  a simpler life…consuming less, living sustainably and becoming independent of “the matrix”.  In my heart I am a freedom lover. I want freedom not only for myself, but for everyone. As I’ve moved towards this lifestyle I feel more free, fulfilled and happy than I ever have in my life!

I am also convinced that the modern western lifestyle is literally destroying the biosphere. By living a simpler life, buying local, buying less stuff and used whenever possible, we can all do our part in helping to restore sanity to our culture so that we can develop a society where everyone’s basic needs are met AND the earth can flourish as it was meant to.

I hope that you will join me on this journey!

Please feel free to contact me by email with any questions or comments you may have.  You can follow our adventures on this blog.

~shiva

Click here for Part 2 (Creating Your Plan of Action!)