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  • From: "Robert Waldrop" <bwaldrop@cox.net>
  • To: "permaculture" <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] Culture vs. Mother
  • Date: Fri, 21 Apr 2006 15:16:47 -0500

My first comment about this is why do you assume there will be a breakdown in "law, order, and civility"? I'm guessing this is in response to "peak oil catastrophism", but the future is not determined and fixed as being "Mad Max Thunderdome". The future is created, one decision at a time, by myriads of people over long periods of time. I know there are any number of people in the peak oil movement who are predicting the imminent arrival of a war of all against all, but I tend to think that says more about how they see themselves and other human beings than it does about what the future will really be like.

I think peak oil is a hazard, but the situation is much more complex than Kunstler and other doom-mongers make it out to be. I am the moderator and listowner of runningonempty2@yahoogroups.com , which has nearly 7,000 members, and has been discussing peak oil since 2001. I have read every one of the 35,000+ messages in our archives on the subject, and I am not at all persuaded that the Lord Humungous is waiting in the wings to rush in and murder my pacifist self and steal my organic peaches. I do not own any guns, and don't expect to own any guns.

I don't pretend to know how we are going to muddle our way through this, because I don't think it is the kind of thing that anybody can either predict or even design (in terms of the society as a whole). I think individuals and small groups can design interesting and useful descent patterns that can be replicated elsewhere, and this can have an impact on our political arrangements. It could go synergy or dysergy, and all that we can do right now is work as hard as we came to make the future intensification of energies be in a positive way.

I think there are some who are positively looking forward to the catastrophic deaths of five billion human beings, but I don't think that those people have really thought through the implications of the violent death of 80% of the human race, not only for human beings, but for all of the other creatures and living beings we share this planet with. It would be much easier on them if we can manage to avoid a catastrophic die-off of the human species.

I believe firmly in self fulfilling prophecies, those are the best kind. I am trying to make sure that the self fulfilling prophecies I am "self-fulfilling" are positive and full of life and beauty and wisdom and goodness and hope. The endless preaching of catastrophic and violent doom is also a self-fulfilling prophecy, but I think we should beware of self-fulfilling those kinds of prophecies.

Bob Waldrop, OKC

----- Original Message ----- From: "E. E. Mitchamore Jr" <emitch@att.net>
To: "permaculture" <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Friday, April 21, 2006 1:04 PM
Subject: Re: [permaculture] Culture vs. Mother


I haven't been studying Permaculture very long, so such discussions raise a question to my mind: Will the probable breakdown of law, order, & civility allow any of us to peacefully practice what we believe?

E. E. "Mitch" Mitchamore
www.hillcountrynatives.biz





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