There are days I wonder if I’m out of my depth homesteading. (I’m a new homesteader in rural Ontario. You can read what that’s looking like here.) So much of my natural occupation has been about documents and computers. I’m at home in that world and understand it. But here in DIY-land there’s so many parts I don’t know, so many systems not in place.
Like the Fool, my friend in the tarot deck, I step out with unknown perils ahead. The stepping is alternately exhilarating and daunting . . .but that’s the mark of the times, isn’t it? So much of the future, so much of what’s coming for each of us, involves moving into unknown territory, being stretched, each of us in our own way. My natural gifts aren’t practical and yet I’m doing many practical things.
Just imagine all the skills we’ll need to do or have done for us in a relocalized future: the ability to grow and conserve food (a vast skill set in itself), to cope psychologically with change, a capacity for physical work, DIY ability, strength to not be easily seduced into anger and blame, intellectual grasp of what’s happening, willingness to let go, carpentry skills, scavenging and storage skills and capacity, ability to defer pleasure, to work with neighbors who are different from ourselves, and many others. By nature or nurture, most of us have some of these skills but we’re all short many. As we proceed toward relocalization, more or less immediately the shortfalls become apparent. We’ll need help – we’ll need each other – though the awareness of what we need and the ability to take advantage of that help doesn’t show up before we get started.
We won’t be able to simply buy what we need in the post fossil fuel world. We might be able to buy it today, but not for long, and certainly not for very long. By definition, relocalization means living within a more local economy; but wealth, the ability to buy whatever we need, is a reflection of connection to the global economy and dependent on it. If the global economy falls to its knees – as fall it must – it won’t be money that’ll get us through but our own resilience and that of our local community.
Resilience is growing fast in pockets and spores but it’s everywhere surrounded by the fossil fuel culture that’s so comfortable and familiar.
The gap between where we are and where we need to be was underscored by Earth Overshoot Day August 22nd.That’s the day on which earth’s resource use went into the red for the year, the day we used up the last of the resources that can be replenished in 2010. The day falls further back each year and would hit January 1st in 2060 if we rumbled on as we are – though we won’t! Our tumble is certain since this resource overshoot is literally unsustainable.
As a species we’re ill-equipped to act on this information. The reason is that we’re strongly conditioned to live within a framework of success and possibility given by our culture and reinforced at every point by our friends, family, and media. Stepping outside the framework feels like breaking a taboo – feels wrong – even though the reality is that when the system does eventually fail, as fail it must, our problems will be many and on more than the social level. The lulling influence of the culture around us is the everywhere situation we sleep through, even though we’re dimly aware of it. We conform to its hidden rules routinely as part of our desire to fit in and do the done thing.
Locked in as we are, it seems foolish to act differently. But don’t give that Fool a chance. He’ll be right in there. And a foolish choice sometimes immediately changes the world.
The foolish choice
Making the foolish choice puts us in touch with others who are making it too, folks we couldn’t have imagined before. (Making the foolish choice gives us a value to them as well.) It takes us from feeling like a peon about to be rolled upon by the machine of history to one who feels he’s a small part of making it. Making the foolish choice connects us to the historical moment as well as to place. It’s more like building an ark than trying to stop the waters from rising…
The bad news is that making the foolish choice also quickly puts us – me – in touch with the things I don’t know how to do – like the moment of being stymied and stuck down a dirt road when the car won’t go and there’s no phone. When I don’t know where the garden should go. Sometimes I start to hate it but there’s a Fool around who doesn’t seem to mind. He’s intimate with this insecurity, recognizes it’s part of the condition and goes with the territory. That nutty guy really doesn’t care!
It’s like they say, the truth shall set you free, but first it’s really going to piss you off. Being pissed off can be part of my story. Something feels hard and I build up a little tale about how hard it is, or how I don’t know how, or what a victim I am, or someone did it to me. That part of me starts running the show.
When he’s ready the Fool starts laughing at this self-serving and now-evidently-untrue story. He seems to see before i do that people I love are facing it too, and that not having all the answers is our common condition. Not necessarily a problem in other words. As soon as the understanding dawns that the challenges will be shared by everyone sooner or later, that it’s a shared problem and not mine alone, there’s suddenly tolerance for the situation and maybe even compassion for the participants. There’s fresh air in here and room to move.
Even the understanding that real and profound change is on the way doesn’t seem so bad. We can see that our fossil fuel fueled fever is about at an end, and the economy that rides on it too and we’re free to act and basically OK with it.
What can you do? It’s really a foolish situation to be in.
