I am working with the Hopi prophecy in my classes.
It really resonates with me. I want desperately to wake people up, to scare them if I have to and then I want to lead them away from the edge of the cliff where they might feel frozen like lemmings in the shock and horror of it all and invite them into relationship, deep relationship with the natural world which they are encoded to love and to sit down in sacred circle and honestly feel our way into our new creation.
Vivienne

I have picked the path, rapidly population decline (RPD). I have outlined the behavior one child per family. I have outlined implementation the contagian model.
http://www.skil.org/position_papers_folder/HumanviabilityRPD.html
And each day I produce elements to recruit people to a belief in RPD.
http://www.skil.org/position_papers_folder/consensusbeforeBehChg.html

I have even created a book proposal to bring these elements to life.
http://www.skil.org/position_papers_folder/SKILNOTEbookprop.html

I cannot say how many hours I have spent gazing at our little river, but I have realized that living along this river can teach my son all he needs to know. It can bring him a profound philosophy, a deep sense of rootedness, not to mention sustenance and an education in physics, mathematics, literature, ecology, and history. The list could go on.

I am losing track of my thoughts here. I just wanted to thank you and to throw in my 2 cents. Living away from the city brings back a part of the child spirit that we leave behind when we enter our school system and our course to adulthood. It brings back our imagination, our child knowledge that everything is so alive and so full of wonder, just as it is. It brings back the magic that we think no longer exists as we grow up. It brings back the wonder. It is the greatest gift I can imagine.

Thank you for all you are doing. Celia

Thank you for sharing your personal feelings and the ways you keep yourself sane as you look squarely at the global situation, and especially the ecological crisis. I’ve started to feel comfort in knowing that other “crashwatch bloggers” (besides you and Tim) are also sharing their personal feelings about the impending collapse, and not just reporting the likelihood/inevitabiity of it. Discovering ways to keep ourselves sane, including self-reflection, seems like essential psychological preparation/self-defense for what is to come. And perhaps acknowledging how difficult it is to unplug from the system and let go of our “well-groomed ego identities” is an important step towards doing so. Maybe we have to know how hard it is, and how risky, before we actually do it resolutely and with finality, knowing that, this time, there’s no going back.

I came across the term ‘crashwatch bloggers’ on Carolyn Baker’s blog in this article by the fellow who runs the Survival Acres site under the name “admin.” In another article, “The Message is Insufficient,” admin bemoans the general public’s inability to respond adequately to the message of collapse, the loneliness of being aware, and his own inability, so far, to completely unplug, or to find anyone who has truly become self-sufficient. The self-disclosure of the difficulty of living in the culture of make-believe - and especially the difficulty of going through the roller coaster of emotions in relative isolation when so few people around us know what we’re talking about - seems an important, deepening aspect of this time, part of the preparation.

For me, six years of living in the wilderness (the Colorado Rockies) helped me to realize that my “essence,” as Sally calls it, is not different from that of the nonhumans that surrounded me. I learned to have intimate relationships with the wildlife, to regard them as my kin, no less than my family and friends. Communicating with nonhumans - actually receiving feedback that they recognized and trusted me - enabled me to hold the conviction that I belong to and within the Earth. I became a passionate animal lover, with only enough discrimination between domestic and wild animals to allow the wild ones to remain wild. But I discovered that they all can be fully present when I was fully present to them. (This is not true when any of us is caged.)

The cosmologist Brian Swimme, one of my teachers, says that one of the best ways to shift the paradigm, evolve and survive the end of the Cenozoic (the age of mammals since the dinosaurs) is to hang out with nonhumans. I think that’s true. When you develop a passionate love for the Earth and her OTHER creatures, it somehow ameliorates the difficulty of facing collapse, of not having many friends on the journey, and of letting go of one’s socially constructed identity, because you KNOW where and with whom you belong. Your identity expands beyond human society. The society of the wild brings us home to our true selves and gives us heart - courage - to remain true to ourselves and what we know to be true. Yes, we live in a culture of make believe, and the nonhuman world helps us to see through it and let go of it. That’s why, I imagine, Sally’s annual wilderness solo is the most important means she has to stay sane.

Self-disclosure: I am caged at the moment. I live in a city. But I hope to end that condition very soon.

Thanks, Sally!

Hugs, Suzanne

I quite agree with you; the society here in Port Angeles has been on the skids for decades and grows ever worse; bigotry, power-grabbing, denial, and banality. More or less the case for Bellingham and Skagit County. Everett and Snohomish are a cold blooded hell.
Seattle is ok, but too expensive to live there.
Tacoma is a horrific basket case in deep denial.
Kitsap County is a religious thing.

The old order is shot, I see it by the deadness and reruns on the tv. I see it in the candidates and their same old bullshit. I see it in the disgusting case of G. W. Bush and Cheney.

A political plan for uniting our world is crucial, it must have 1st priority or we will not survive, (nuclear armageddon). I’ve created the plan, HOW do I get it published?

Love has to be resurrected from its Feminist graveyard.

Universal faiths, (Buddhism, Sufism, and Vedanta), must replace the bigotted sectarian faiths.

We Americans MUST let go of Calvinist sadism, self-centeredness, crass materialism, and bigotry. -Our track record is covered with blood, violence, and exploitation.

We’ve a very long way to go. -Time is short, and the water rises.

-Bill Bokamper
BA/History
Vietnam Vet.
Buddhist

I can see where you’re coming from, sort of, but I don’t agree that communing with the Earth and the nonhumans is just a fantasy indulgence of those in resource-rich environments. I think it is the way most humans lived for 99% of our history as a species and the capacity for it is just beneath the veneer of “civilization.” The trouble is that human overpopulation and industrial civilization have turned the heaven-on-Earth of balanced ecosystems into the hell-on-Earth of a depleted, sick planet.

I have no illusions about the chaos, violence, insanity, etc. that we can expect when the shit hits the fan. I’ll do what I can to survive, but I won’t become a survivalist. I’m ready to join the die-off if Mother Earth needs me to go, because she certainly needs for about 2/3 of us to go. Otherwise, there ain’t gonna be no living environment for future generations of any species. The whole planet may become like the Sahel, or Cambodia, or Chernobel.

So, what do you think, Joe? Are you ready?

Suzanne

Every time anthropologists have done serious economic studies of extant hunter-gatherer groups, they find that they work an average of four hours per day. And these are the last of their kind who have been pushed off into the most marginal lands; we’ll never know how easy hunter-gatherers may have had it when even the rich ecosystems belonged to them before they were overrun and seized for agriculture. We are lucky now in this brief era of fossil fuel luxury to be down to an eight-hour workday, only twice as much as hunter-gatherers. But for our time on the job, paying 50% of our income in all kinds of taxes is a good rule of thumb, leaving us with four hours per day for ourselves — same as the hunter-gatherers. Is there a connection there?

Civilization, for all of its wonders, is the biggest lie in the history of the planet. It is solely so a few parasites at the top can suck off the labor of everyone below.

I might have guessed that film makers would be film lovers, so may I recommend my lifetime favorite film to curl up with a bowl of popcorn to: “Zardoz”. It was written, produced, and directed by John Boorman in 1975. It was the strangest role Sean Connery ever acted. And it was a box office bomb because NO ONE wanted to hear its message. I consider it the most accurately prophetic film ever made. It foretells all of these: ecological collapse; overpopulation; murderous population reduction campaigns; in a sci-fi form, gated communities occupied by the clueless wealthy who consider themselves elites with a right to exploit the masses; the cynical use of religion to control the masses; voice activated computers, and an erily accurate equivalent of Total Information Awareness. If you’ve never seen this film, it will blow your mind. If you are old enough to have seen it when it came out 32 years ago, consider revisiting it to see how much of it is coming true.

Tom Ness

What you say in this blog reminds me very much of the work of Eckhart Tolle. If you don’t already know his book *The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment* I think you will find great insight there regarding this part of your essay in particular: “what feels safe is other than that limited, separate, disconnected ego. What brings the sense of safety is that I have come into contact with something of my essence. I have touched that essential self that is connected, at-one, with the whole of timeless reality.”

I too have experienced what you experienced, Sally, and I have studied a lot of works in my attempt to understand that experience better. As I see it one can learn more about it from Eckhart Tolle than from any other author, East or West, living or dead.

Bill