Building Community

I’ve accepted peak oil: now what?

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Oil will peak. I get it…I am convinced that this thing we call civilization is ludicrously based on profit and is a madman’s interpretation of the pursuit of happiness. I recognize the insanity. The illusion that participating in the race for stainless steel appliances and ride-on lawn mowers as a worthy endeavor is squashed forever.

So now what?

He was magnificent: what you can do when you have to

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Because just as my friend’s husband found, when something is needed – and by needed I mean either practically necessary because there is no alternative (ie, the baby is coming or the power is out) or when something is needed because a body of people are committed to its rightness and seriousness (ie, the embargo requires us to make our own cloth, or the bus boycott requires elderly women to walk miles each day) we find in ourselves capacities that we hardly knew were there. While sometimes the worst does happen, often we are surprised by outcomes – simply because we underestimate people.

Reasons for good cheer

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In the vast and traumatic mess that we are facing, I’m seeing some surprising signs of hope – not that we’ll magically reshape our society into the renewable paradise a lot of us would like to see, but that people are well, not acting like complete idiots – that they are responding to things fairly appropriately, even wisely sometimes.