Macrobiotic Life

Question from Joe Waxman at Facebook was:

What will life be like in a year or two from now? Pretty much the same, or drastically different? What do you think?

Here’s my shot. Retelling the quite proliferated story of oil depletion, well spread by John Michael Greer (to name my favorite doom & gloom writer).

Less of unpolluted natural environment, hence less quality water and soil. Less oil = less of everything oil based, which is 90% of the present system. Economic growth of China, India, Brasil, Russia (more machine produced stuff), economic downfall of US, Europe (more human production again). More nuclear factories worldwide (because of energy depletion from cheap fossil fuels and no other option acceptable by the (lazy, spoiled) society – they can’t accept the only real option, to use less energy, because it’s going right against the present economic habit of continual growth, continual consumerism, continual hedonistic lifestyle, we are all in this interwined by being addicts of the present comfort). In US, Europe – more human produced food, with less use of oil based products, hence more natural. Back to local economy models. All of this is logically resulting from my basic presumtion, which is “less of cheap fossil fuels”. If not in two years, very soon anyway.

Do you think the economy is a worthwhile knowledge?
Do you think the economists are studying hard to provide us with a really useful ideas, products?
Do you think they better understand how the society operates, evolves and should behave?
Quite the opposite.
They are brainwashed, deluded in the name of Money.
Their main goal (even if they don’t realised, that’s how brainwashed they are) is to promote the concept of the Money – this concept is their chief marketing product, they are trained sellers of this Money idea.

Money are worthless, they are an illusion, their value is based on trust, on our consensus.
They poses no inherent value, no real value.
What is the real value then?
For example – heat, shelter, clothing, food, tools for providing aforementioned things and also love, fun, friends.
Do you get it?

You can’t eat money, but they have a little value in the form of tiny heat they can supply you when you burn them while trying to get a little bit warmer, in the times of the Money illusion collapse, when the cheap oil, that supplies your heat requirements nowadays, will stop flowing. That’s why you should collect paper money only and in a small denominations, just to have them as much as possible for a longer fire. I am joking, but actually it was always better idea to have many different small denominations when the horrors of the inflation hit the country and the banks stopped working, you couldn’t get any money – when this time starts again (and it will, because the inflation is hard coded into this economic system, it’s a process how to balance old debts, when things are out of control), you need small money to buy the real thinks (like bread), until the money will still have any value (for the baker).

Because, what has value for the baker? Real wealth again – food, shelter, heat, clothing.
If there are no money, do we stop to use these real-valued things?
Not at all.
We start to exchange them for something else.
Something basic for the whole Universe.
Something all economists are taught nothing about, or apparently not in the way that should give them enough hints to realise they are brainwashed Earth-destroyers.
All economists should learn really hard the Laws of Thermodynamics as their basic knowledge.

Because, it’s all about Energy.
Energy should be the real currency of economics, not the money and because of this delusion, our daily steps are based on a devastating model, that could only stupid, undeveloped brains propagate.
Yes, I call the economists stupid.
And all of us, who don’t try to understand the reality better.
It should be our basic knowledge too.

Stupidity comes together (also) with wrong thinking, clouded, heavy, detail oriented thinking. Not able to connect all dots, to see things broader, interconnected. Stupid people have little will to understand the basic phenomenons, basic laws of Universe, like Energy flow.
Ohsawa would tell you what’s the cause and what’s the remedy of course.

My English and knowledge of this topic is not good at all, that’s why you should read this article, minutes that can’t be spend better for the upcoming times:
It’s the Area Under the Curve – Oil Prices and the Economy

“I don’t need to buy more, to work more in order to get more of products and services. In fact, I can be happy, content, joyful, creative without spending a single dime. All I need is the sun and the trees and the water and a good friend.”

Stop the pathological process of constant money spending on worthless shit – every modern product harms our earthly environment – we should not destroy our home (Earth) just because we are stupid buyer addicts.

Let the economy collapse from the less buying, producing, spending, creating – the economic system is not prepared on the LESS ideology, but who cares – the transition will be rough, but there’s no other way from insanity, only through the real hard detoxication – drop some of your addictions every day – you can start with foods easily – simplify, eat less salt, sugar, spices – spend less each day.

I’ve been increasingly angry about the bigoted Greek-bashing attitude by people that have no idea.

So here’s some myth-bashing:
1. Greeks are lazy and live in luxury. After the introduction of the Euro, multinational and domestic cartels started increasing the prices for basic goods and services. The local producers were blackmailed into giving up their produce for pittance while the final prices at the supermarkets were sky-rocketing. Thus Athens became more expensive than London for basic goods, in just a few years. Because the salaries were about half of what an average Londoner makes, this drove the public sector pay up and a very small proportion of the private sector pay. However, especially in the case of the private sector most of salaries are still survival-only or less, especially for young people. While most people had to work two or three jobs to make ends meet, large corporations were making millions selling the same product in Greece for double the price as other European countries. In fact, with the exception of public-sector workers, for the last decade Greeks are in the top 5 most overworked people in EU27, but amongst the least well paid. Of course, basic goods are not luxury but the few that had anything to do with the big companies did actually share in some of the profits, but that’s the same in every country in the world.

2. Greeks are sneaky tax-evaders and should be punished. Corruption is rampant in Greece, that’s a fact. Greeks just adapted to a situation perpetrated by the political elite which was supported by EU members since they could use the corruption to make multi-million Euro deals – see Siemens scandal. The state of play at the moment is that the ordinary Greek doesn’t trust any politician and immediately assumes that he or she has got their hand in the “pot of honey”. This, in conjunction with corrupt public services (a misnomer as they are neither services nor public), which require thousands of extra cash to function (imagine an UK-style NHS where you need to pay to get the doctor’s “attention”) has made Greeks extremely sceptical about where their tax money is going and where it should be going instead. So, instead of paying taxes to have a decent health service you end up evading your taxes to pay the doctors under the table to look after you. It’s not right but people everywhere adapt to the status quo to survive.

3. Greeks get 14 monthly salaries for 12 months work! No, they don’t. They get a yearly salary in 14 instalments. This is not as good as it sounds for two reasons. Firstly, instead of getting more every month you get lump sums at Christmas, Easter and for your holidays, which mostly go to repaying credit cards. Secondly, now that the 13th and 14th salary is about to be stopped, you lose one seventh of your yearly salary. And it’s not as if it was that big a salary in the first place. This is almost the same as if the UK government asked people to work March and September without pay, but it sounds more acceptable.

3. Greece fudged their statistics to get into the Euro. This is a perfect example of a lie that is repeated by the media so often that it becomes the “truth”. The real truth is that Greece got into the Euro as all other countries (except Germany – perhaps) by getting some help from the Goldman-Sachs-type American financial behemoths. This was not illegal at the time, the fact is that everybody was dumping other currencies and getting Euros. Then a new government came into power and wanted to buy some F16s from the US (a deal that I am sure included some hefty bribes) and changed the rules of accounting (payment on order instead of delivery) retrospectively so that it had the money to do so. What was bizarre was that the rest of the EU didn’t object to that, perhaps there was something in it for them too. Then they changed the rules again to what they were before. The same government is mostly responsible for today’s mess and was ousted from power last October. Strangely, most of the problems started after that.

4. It’s the Greeks’ fault for electing corrupt politicians. The fact is that, as in the rest of Europe, there is a two-party political system that has entrenched itself so well into power that only a revolution would change things. Unfortunately, that’s not allowed in the EU, as such a revolution would probably be either a far-right or far-left affair. So political leaders change and keep promising to battle corruption while they end up doing the same things as before. The rest of the EU is happy to co-operate with whatever Muppet is elected as long as they are nice and quiet.

5. Why should the Germans or any other European pay? There are two good reasons for that, a moral and an economic one. The moral reason is that most of the money Greeks owe were diverted to the big European corporations like Siemens, J&J, and others too numerous to mention, and hence paid for some European jobs. These companies used the Greek status quo to charge extortionate prices for their products and services. In a country with honest politicians they would have been told where to put their products, but a few millions here and there sealed the deals. The economic reason is that if Greece defaults it’s mostly German, French and British banks that would lose their money. Instead, Europeans will get loans at 1.5-3% and give loans to Greece at 5% and make a nice little profit, while they keep selling their “superior quality” products to the Greeks at extortionate prices and keep some jobs going.

6. The IMF is involved because EU cannot handle the crisis on its own. This is a half-truth, that doesn’t explain the situation adequately. The truth is, that the EU cannot tell Greece what to do when it comes to public services and welfare and cannot ask for privatizations. But the IMF doesn’t have such restrictions. The EU (and the US) see massive privatization as a way out of this hole mostly because it suits them. They will get to buy everything for peanuts.

7. Greece should live within its means and not borrow more than it can repay. A recent study in Greece revealed that corruption and mismanagement since 1980 has cost the Greek economy €600 billion. This is double the current debt. Enough said.

What should happen now? I personally think that Greece should default, tell the banks to stuff it, put most politicians in jail and confiscate their property, forcibly drive out the big financial institutions, go back to the countryside and live the simple life growing veggies and fishing. Unfortunately, they will never let them, there’s profit to be made.

Taken from the comments at – Greek debt crisis spreading ‘like Ebola’ and Europe must act now, OECD warns

Short summarizing message of the things to come before 2016 (according to David Icke).

From the video comments:

ABSOLUTELY RIGHT ON!

Anyone who tries violence, especially at this stage of the Revolution, IS ONLY AN AGENT PROVACATEUR.

They want us to react violently, en masse, to justify instituting Marshal Law.

The SECRET to our success, is to become completely independent of their System, off the Grid.

Don’t buy their toxic products; Boycott every Corporation; Peaceful Resistance to every Government; Non-Violent Non-Compliance with their? immoral laws;
Tune out their deceitful Media Agenda.

There’s a new Archdruid Report – Endgame – as usually, this is the top important material you should all read. If your english is not perfect (I need a lot of time with dictionary to read these Archdruid Reports, quite complicated english for me), at least read the last 3 paragraphs – they are the most practical and they are the conclusion.

Scattered among the statistical noise that makes up most of today’s news are data points that suggest to me that business as usual is quietly coming to an end around us, launching us into a new world for which very few of us have made any preparations at all.

If I read the signs correctly, America has finally reached the point where its economy is so deep into overshoot that catabolic collapse is beginning in earnest. If so, a great many of the things most of us in this country have treated as permanent fixtures are likely to go away over the years immediately before us, as the United States transforms itself into a Third World country.

…be well advised to stock their pantries, clear their debts, and get to know their neighbors
…to learn a practical skill or two

I may be wrong – and to be frank, I hope that I’m wrong – but it looks increasingly to me as though we’re in for a very rough time in the very near future.

I strongly recommend this blog – covering upcoming civilization problems, economy, finance, spirituality, illusion, peak oil – The Archdruid Report.

John Michael Greer

The Grand Archdruid of the Ancient Order of Druids in America (AODA), John Michael Greer has been active in the alternative spirituality movement for more than 25 years, and is the author of more than twenty books, including “The Druidry Handbook” (Weiser, 2006) and “The Long Descent: A User’s Guide to the End of the Industrial Age” (New Society, 2008). He lives in Cumberland, Maryland.

Twilight of Money

The consequence of all this pyramid building is that there are not enough goods and services on Earth to equal, at current prices, more than a small percentage of the face value of stocks, bonds, derivatives, and other fiscal exotica now in circulation.

Over the longer term, on the other hand, it’s safe to assume that the vast majority of paper assets now in circulation, whatever the currency in which they’re denominated, will lose essentially all their value.

How the trajectory will unfold is anyone’s guess, but the possibility that we may soon see sharp declines in the value of the dollar, and of dollar-denominated paper assets, probably should not be ignored, and cashing in abstract representations of wealth for things of more enduring value might well belong high on the list of sensible preparations for the future.

You can find a lot of yin/yang thinking in his writings.

political power begins with raw violence and evolves toward progressively more subtle means of suasion

And this is author’s practical advice what to do to prepare for the coming times:

My advice remains what it’s always been — concentrate on acquiring skills, and the basic tools needed to put them to work. My point is simply that hoarding cash, or other forms of paper wealth, may well become even less useful than hoarding concrete things.

Other interesting reactions from articles’ comments

My guess is that the total amount of energy extracted from fossil fuels in our age is equal to all the muscular energy exerted by human beings in all the ages leading up to ours. Remember that when a planeload of tourists fly from Los Angeles to Egypt to see the Great Pyramid, they use as much energy as it took to build the Great Pyramid in the first place.

I’ve chosen to participate in the abstract money games that structure life in late industrial society, as there are certain things I want to do and certain resources I value that would be out of reach if I was a hermit, or otherwise living outside the money economy. I don’t take those games seriously; I use them because for certain things, they’re the only game in town just now. Their raw absurdity is simply another detail.

It’s not necessary to stop using money to get out from under the spell that makes people think it’s the same thing as wealth; just treat it as a tool, and remember that its only value is the willingness of other people to take it in exchange.

There’s a great passage in one of Schumacher’s books about that moment of insight where one realizes one’s teachers don’t actually know what they’re talking about. That ought to happen much more often in economics classrooms than it does.

It’s a mistake to chalk up to conspiracy what can be explained by stupidity.

When an accountant discovers that the till doesn’t balance, she checks her figures, finds the error, and corrects it. When an economist discovers that the till doesn’t balance, he invents a theory to explain why it shouldn’t balance. There’s no question in my mind which of the two is the useful response.