Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

livingontheland - [Livingontheland] Systemic Collapse: The Irony Of Rural Life By Peter Goodchild

livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Healthy soil and sustainable growing

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org, OWL-OldWaysLiving@yahoogroups.com
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] Systemic Collapse: The Irony Of Rural Life By Peter Goodchild
  • Date: Mon, 26 Sep 2011 20:40:53 -0600


Systemic Collapse: The Irony Of Rural Life By Peter Goodchild
http://www.countercurrents.org/goodchild260911.htm

26 September, 2011

All of humanity is involved in a global collapse that ranges from
natural-resource decline to the current obsession, the multi-trillion-dollar
financial crisis. The only real solution will be for individuals to make a
personal decision to move away from the cities, because ultimately that is
the only way to provide self-sufficiency and independence from the global
economy. But buying rural property at the moment, at least in the
more-industrialized countries of the West, involves a certain irony. Those
who most need to get out of the city are those who have the least money,
while those who find it easiest to get out of the city are those who are rich
enough to be hauling huge motorboats behind them as they travel -- a little
like Marie Antoinette dressing up in a shepherdess outfit.

The rich, in other words, can live well in the city, because endless goods
and services are available with money. The non-rich -- i.e. the majority of
the population -- cannot live as well in the city, because they do not have
as much money. It is therefore the non-rich who have the greater need to
escape.

The catch is that the non-rich are, in many ways, "locked" into the city.
Even if you cannot live very well without money, you can nevertheless get by.
In the city, you can survive with little or no money because there is public
transport; there is cheap housing, even if only at the level of the boarding
house or lower; and there are always sources of food, to the extent that even
with no money at all you can go to a food bank or elsewhere. The nanny state
will keep you alive, at least if you are willing to obey your nanny.

On the other hand, to move to the country, during these earlier days of
collapse, you might need money to buy property, and while it is not as
expensive as in the city it is still not cheap. There is usually no public
transportation, so you probably need a car, and on top of that the distance
from home to job -- if you have such a thing -- may be considerable. If you
can produce some of your own food you will be doing better than many other
people, but food generally costs more out in the country. So do many other
things, including electrical power and sometimes gasoline. In the 19th
century, the division between urban and rural was not so pronounced, but
Earth -- in the sense of ""the countryside" -- seems to have become a distant
planet.

Perhaps fortunately, after the total collapse the money economy will vanish
from both urban and rural areas. Even in industrialized countries, it is
already disappearing in many places, because of the illegal ("gray") economy;
here in Canada, Newfoundland seems to be setting an example of that. But how
long do we have to wait for total collapse?

The paradox is probably not insoluble, and there seem to be ways of escape to
suit any budget. Here in Canada, if you are a physically-fit 20-year-old
without much money, you could move to north of latitude 50, look for any job
(if you decide you really need some money), and as soon as possible you could
get a gun and an axe and head for the bush. On the other hand, if you're not
20 years old but more like 62, as in fact I am now, you might decide that
you're better off not spending the winter in a log cabin at minus 60 C. I
made that decision myself, actually, when I was 20, not 62 -- it was a
brilliant midwinter morning in northern Ontario, and the temperature had been
that low for weeks.

Peter Goodchild is the author of Survival Skills of the North American Indians






Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page