Joined: Apr 06, 2006 Posts: 2959 Location: 3 miles NW of Champoeg, Republic of Cascadia
Posted: Sat Oct 27, 2007 1:06 am Post subject: Re: I Love Peak Oil
Was it ever the case, though? I know enough about H/Gs to be aware that generalizations are ridiculous. I'd definitely not make one that sounds like a synopsis of the Flintstones. But - have there been H/G societies where leadership was established by being the baddest biggest boy?
Watch out for '92' JPL. We need a slogan, like "54-40 or Fight!" Anyone actively proselytizing?
I see your new user status is another Hawkwind song. Maybe someday I'll be Lord of Light. _________________ Cogito, ergo non satis bibivi
I'm just gonna find a cash machine.
Posted: Sat Oct 27, 2007 2:49 am Post subject: Re: I Love Peak Oil
As a woman I would not like to go back to H/G societies. Women were often treated as second class beings and mostly as cart horses/ trade objects. For the men it was ok - if you survived the average 30% violent death ratio for males.
Not that agricultural socities are any better: regular mass famine and epidemcis. Greater social inequity.
Joined: Dec 27, 2004 Posts: 12024 Location: zombie horde wonderland
Posted: Sat Oct 27, 2007 8:29 am Post subject: Re: I Love Peak Oil
Ayame wrote:
As a woman I would not like to go back to H/G societies. Women were often treated as second class beings and mostly as cart horses/ trade objects. For the men it was ok - if you survived the average 30% violent death ratio for males.
Not that agricultural socities are any better: regular mass famine and epidemcis. Greater social inequity.
Don't worry, you probably won't have to "go back" to HG societies. But we might want to consider egalitarian or non-hierarchical societies, the tribal social organization, as it is more diverse, thus more adaptable.
I don't advocate "going back" to anything, personally. _________________ "...powerdown so soft and fluffy you'll think you're living in a pillow..." - jboogy
Joined: Mar 26, 2007 Posts: 30 Location: L.A.'s suburban wasteland
Posted: Sat Oct 27, 2007 3:25 pm Post subject: Re: I Love Peak Oil
Ayame wrote:
As a woman I would not like to go back to H/G societies. Women were often treated as second class beings and mostly as cart horses/ trade objects. For the men it was ok - if you survived the average 30% violent death ratio for males.
Not that agricultural socities are any better: regular mass famine and epidemcis. Greater social inequity.
Actually, it appears that it was the agricultural revolution which lead to the disparity in power between genders (in some, not all, societies).
On Topic:
I'd say that I love peak oil, it's just that I'm not in love with peak oil. I'm hoping we can stay friends.
Posted: Sun Oct 28, 2007 5:29 am Post subject: Re: I Love Peak Oil
jbeckton wrote:
1) Are you suggesting it is possible to back to hunter gatherer existence with the knowledge we have acquired?
I see no allternative. But I don't see that as going back, but a process of multiple generations, prosess of participating in spiritual evolution of the Kosmos.
Quote:
2) Those societies were ruled like a pack of animals, the strongest man was the leader. If you wanted to question that, you fought him, you did not debate him! Harmony with nature is a very violent existence. There is no helping the sick and weak, only getting rid of them. Most people couldn’t make it in the Marines let alone a survival of the fittest lifestyle. I think that most here would prefer our current lifestyle over that because most people are weak and they would not have survived without civilization.
That is very ignorant view, a projection of "civilization's" inherent tendency to violence and hierarchic thinking, creating a a charicature of "primitive" man as a violent brute (to justify the imperialistic need to "civilize" him).
E.g Nordic shamanistic - few of them still around even today - tribes rely on their shamans for the livelihood of the tribe, and in these tribal languages there is not even a word for war. Shamans - often bodily weak - channel their "inner violence" into fighting diseases to cure people and servitude of the good of the whole tribe. The kind of harmony with nature these tribes live in is of course unimaginable for the modern "civilized" man (who sees nature as nothing but an object to rob) and we tend to call it magical. They consider their way of life just natural, and see the "civilized" way of life as alianation from nature wich leads to severe collective insanity, violent and self-destructive.
I would say the empirical evidence of Peak Oil and other things proves them right and us the insanely violent ones.
Posted: Sun Oct 28, 2007 5:43 am Post subject: Re: I Love Peak Oil
JPL wrote:
I have three young children & I have taken great pains to educate them fully on Climate Change & its implications. (Peak Oil would be a step to far IMHO so I don't talk to them about that - yet).
The main problem is, it is very difficult to tell your kids one thing, when their teachers, their peer group & elder relatives are telling them something different. Like the fact that my mother-in-law recently bought 'the girls' plane tickets to go and see some crap ballet-show a thousand miles away & the grounds being that I wasn't looking after their 'cultural education' (whatever that is!).
Yeah, tell me (father of two) about it. First, start learning yourself - urbanite dweller without any needed practical skills - after getting the emotional and theoretical alianation from modern culture to some tolerable level, then try to get the wife to see what you see (lot of unavoidable cruelty involved), then, if you even get that far without a divorce, as a family start planning on how to move to a village, a kind of village that it takes to raise children in the right direction.
But any case, better to try and have something meaningfull to do rather than just getting mortally depressed.
Joined: Mar 18, 2006 Posts: 1149 Location: Last outpost of Civilisation
Posted: Sun Oct 28, 2007 4:23 pm Post subject: Re: I Love Peak Oil
MrBean wrote:
JPL wrote:
I have three young children & I have taken great pains to educate them fully on Climate Change & its implications. (Peak Oil would be a step to far IMHO so I don't talk to them about that - yet).
The main problem is, it is very difficult to tell your kids one thing, when their teachers, their peer group & elder relatives are telling them something different. Like the fact that my mother-in-law recently bought 'the girls' plane tickets to go and see some crap ballet-show a thousand miles away & the grounds being that I wasn't looking after their 'cultural education' (whatever that is!).
Yeah, tell me (father of two) about it. First, start learning yourself - urbanite dweller without any needed practical skills - after getting the emotional and theoretical alianation from modern culture to some tolerable level, then try to get the wife to see what you see (lot of unavoidable cruelty involved), then, if you even get that far without a divorce, as a family start planning on how to move to a village, a kind of village that it takes to raise children in the right direction.
But any case, better to try and have something meaningfull to do rather than just getting mortally depressed.
Aye, I've been very busy for the last 4 years getting ready for the coming crisis. We have 12 acres that I have been planting out & doing the 'permaculture' thing and an old farmhouse that we have raised from a ruin and turned into an eco-friendly, wood-heated fortress.
Wife on board & stuff ready to plant out for the coming year.
Trouble is, we now (probably) have to sell up - our problem was that we got the location wrong. The only way we afford to do what we wanted to do was was to emigrate from Britain to France and suddenly the new French presidency has decided to clear out all the 'English hippies'.
That's why I'm a bit depressed at the moment. No lack of optomism & skills but a very grey-looking future for my family, despite all my efforts. Ho-humm...
Joined: Mar 26, 2005 Posts: 3687 Location: over here
Posted: Sun Oct 28, 2007 4:49 pm Post subject: Re: I Love Peak Oil
JPL wrote:
Trouble is, we now (probably) have to sell up - our problem was that we got the location wrong. The only way we afford to do what we wanted to do was was to emigrate from Britain to France and suddenly the new French presidency has decided to clear out all the 'English hippies'.
JP
Are you kidding me? They can't do that, can they? That's really sad, the amount of work and time that you spent setting up is unequalled compared to what most of us here have done. I hope to see this turn out alright, I hate to see a good man down : ( _________________ "The best thing about the future is that it comes only one day at a time."
Joined: Mar 18, 2006 Posts: 1149 Location: Last outpost of Civilisation
Posted: Sun Oct 28, 2007 5:31 pm Post subject: Re: I Love Peak Oil
Bas wrote:
Are you kidding me? They can't do that, can they? That's really sad, the amount of work and time that you spent setting up is unequalled compared to what most of us here have done. I hope to see this turn out alright, I hate to see a good man down : (
They can & they did. Basically, they are dropping us all out of the 'Social Security' net unless we get (& keep) paid full-time jobs in France (yea, right). If we fail to do this, we are then in breach of our 'right of residency' come next April & have to leave (or get Private Healthcare which with a family of five AND paying French taxes - amongst the highest in the world basically makes a 'downscaled' life impossible.) So that's it, basically.
I don't know if you can read French but the full details are here
Joined: Mar 26, 2005 Posts: 3687 Location: over here
Posted: Sun Oct 28, 2007 5:47 pm Post subject: Re: I Love Peak Oil
JPL wrote:
They can & they did. Basically, they are dropping us all out of the 'Social Security' net unless we get (& keep) paid full-time jobs in France (yea, right). If we fail to do this, we are then in breach of our 'right of residency' come next April & have to leave (or get Private Healthcare which with a family of five AND paying French taxes - amongst the highest in the world basically makes a 'downscaled' life impossible.) So that's it, basically.
I don't know if you can read French but the full details are here
Not happy.
JP
hmmm, so if I get this right, France is kicking you out of the social system because you're an English national, and the English have kicked you out once you left for France?
I'm not sure how it exactly works in other European countries, but I always saw these kind of "risks" as a major counter argument for me moving somewhere else within the EU; I'm not sure either if there are any European "guidelines" on this, it seems like a grey area.
Either way, keep us posted. _________________ "The best thing about the future is that it comes only one day at a time."
Joined: Mar 18, 2006 Posts: 1149 Location: Last outpost of Civilisation
Posted: Sun Oct 28, 2007 6:13 pm Post subject: Re: I Love Peak Oil
Bas wrote:
JPL wrote:
They can & they did. Basically, they are dropping us all out of the 'Social Security' net unless we get (& keep) paid full-time jobs in France (yea, right). If we fail to do this, we are then in breach of our 'right of residency' come next April & have to leave (or get Private Healthcare which with a family of five AND paying French taxes - amongst the highest in the world basically makes a 'downscaled' life impossible.) So that's it, basically.
I don't know if you can read French but the full details are here
Not happy.
JP
hmmm, so if I get this right, France is kicking you out of the social system because you're an English national, and the English have kicked you out once you left for France?
I'm not sure how it exactly works in other European countries, but I always saw these kind of "risks" as a major counter argument for me moving somewhere else within the EU; I'm not sure either if there are any European "guidelines" on this, it seems like a grey area.
Either way, keep us posted.
Yea, basically you have it. The new French Presidency has come in on an anti-immigration ticket and people like ourselves are easy targets. I not think this attitude will get any better in the coming years (groan).
I would stick things out but what with PO beating at the doors my wife is very insistant that if we have to bail out and go back to England, the time to do it is NOW (or even yesterday).
We can't sell the farm for much but if it will pay for a bit of (hideously over-priced) land in England (Devon is preferred choice) then maybe we can hit the ground running. A lot of tough choices ahead though. We will see...
Posted: Sun Oct 28, 2007 6:24 pm Post subject: Re: I Love Peak Oil
JPL wrote:
Trouble is, we now (probably) have to sell up - our problem was that we got the location wrong. The only way we afford to do what we wanted to do was was to emigrate from Britain to France and suddenly the new French presidency has decided to clear out all the 'English hippies'.
That's why I'm a bit depressed at the moment. No lack of optomism & skills but a very grey-looking future for my family, despite all my efforts. Ho-humm...
JP
Any case, you are plenty ahead of me, congrats. But re your current problem, have you looked into the ecovillage projects in GB and Europe, if there is something suitable for you:
http://gen.ecovillage.org/
But how can Sarkozy "clear out English hippies", doesn't EU "freedom of movement" apply to you?
Edit: Ok, the SS thing... and not five years full . I cant get a direct link to ecovillages in England from that site, but the countrysearch gave nine hits. Whole GB should produce even more choises, and hopefully one that suit's your needs and preferences.
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. I cant get a direct link to ecovillages in England from that site, but the countrysearch gave nine hits. Whole GB should produce even more choises, and hopefully one that suit's your needs and preferences.
