Comrades Against the Void

Alone or no?

So humanity frets

When gazing at stars.

"If not, are we wise,"

Some wonder, "to seek them out?

Space is deep water."

Worse for me to think

We are alone in this soup:

God's only eyes.

Even conquerors are comrades against the Void.

Living with the fact of the Really Big One

Before

We all know the dire realities.

Nine point two on the Richter. A mountain of water 700 miles wide.  

When. Not if.

Seattle, Tacoma, Olympia, Portland, Salem, Eugene.

The greatest natural disaster in the history of the United States.

Old news. We've known for years. But Kathryn Shultz's  "The Really Big One," which appeared in the New Yorker last week, is a hair-raising reminder.

We need to prepare. As individuals and collectively.

You can learn a lot about preparation at Ready.gov. You can also contact your elected representatives. You can also get emergency training at many local fire departments. Gratis.

As a first step, my wise and prudent wife and I will build an emergency kit. Not a small step. It takes discipline and effort. Storage space must be found. Investments will be required. Supplies must be rotated.

After?

There is another kind of preparation, as well.

Foreknowledge of disaster instills a sense of fate. Like the fact of one's own death.

As a proud, lifelong Oregonian, I nurture a certain resignation. A recognition of forces greater than myself.

To quote Shakespeare's Richard II, "Cry woe, destruction, ruin, and decay. The worst is Death. And Death will have his day."

When the time comes, I hope to be ready. In both senses.

(Click here to listen to a reading of Jim Shepard's "Cretan Love Song," a short story dealing with the same subject matter. The story begins at the 20:50 mark of the podcast. It's just over 5 minutes long. I hope I could have the same self-awareness and courage as the protagonist in this powerful story.)

A People's Climate March

On this, the last day but one of the hottest summer on record, Portland hit 90 degrees Fahrenheit for the twenty-first time this calendar year. A fitting day for the event I reluctantly attended this afternoon: the People's Climate March.

Sticking to the shade

Reluctantly, you ask? Well, yes, I'm afraid so. For reasons that I'll relate forthwith. But first, let me describe what I found when I hopped the old Bus #14 (with a stop just outside my front door) and rode down to Waterfront Park.

Temperatures were near 90F

The event was a demonstration for progress on limiting carbon emissions, on reversing the economic trends that threaten to fundamentally change the weather patterns and climate of our planet. A noble and worthwhile goal.

My hopes for turnout were buoyed by the number of demonstrators that boarded the bus as we neared downtown. In fact, all seats were occupied, and many folks had to stand. Senior citizens, families with children, hippies, hipsters, church folks, labor unions --all were represented.

I conversed with a woman a few years younger than me, named Angela. She was on her way to the demonstration with her tween-aged daughter.

"Looks like we might have a good turnout," Angela said, glancing around the bus at the people with their placards and their noise-makers.

"Yeah," I said. "I hope so. But I've got to tell you, I don't know if these demonstrations do much good. I remember when we had the massive demonstrations against the Bush administration and the illegal Iraq invasion. We came out in our millions and--"

"--it didn't make any difference," she finished, nodding glumly. But then she brightened. "These events are good for community building though."

"True," I admitted. "And it's encouraging to gather with other like-minded people. You feel less isolated."

On this we agreed.

The crowd at Waterfront was sizable, but not huge. It was such a hot day and the sun so merciless that people clustered in the shade patches afforded by the trees along the walkway and the stretched shadows of the high-rise hotels across the street. The crowd on the swathes of sun-beaten grass closer to the river  was spottier.

I was disappointed. Reports had it that, on the other side of the country, in Manhattan, the climate march attracted 300,000-plus. Portland, of course, can't expect to match the crowds in the Big Apple, but we are still the feisty Rose City, whom Bush the Elder named the "Beirut of North America." I felt we could have done better.

Governor Kitzhaber addresses the crowd

But then again, maybe there are other Portlanders who share my resignation, my sense of futility.

Which gets to the reason I was reluctant to attend.

Clever play on words, madam

You see, I lost something after Iraq. Or rather, I lost something when the American people failed to punish Bush for Iraq. In spite of our massive demonstrations, Bush and his coterie were able to pull off the invasion and avoid any accountability. The American people even voted to keep him in office after the fact.

I learned a valuable and bitter lesson from that travesty. It's something that I first encountered when I read Tolstoy's War and Peace in my college days, and which my experiences since have only served to confirm: Human events, history, social evolution, progress --whatever you choose to call it --operates outside human wishes or desires. War, technology, economic development are phenomena that have lives of their own quite apart from the petty wishes of individuals or even societies.

And that, I suspect is what will determine the fate of humanity as regards climate change. Carbon emissions will rise or fall according to laws that are quite beyond what anyone might want or hope --whether it's the Earth-loving hippie or the greedy short-sighted Texas oilman.

I would've liked to see a better turnout

"Well, Dade," one might ask, "if you feel that way, why go to the demonstration?"

Because of this: In some far-flung future, if and when there is some entity or society that looks upon our race and wonders about us --whether we were aware of our doom, whether we were concerned, whether we cared at all --I want to be part of that contingent that registers our capacity for compassion and hope and concern for the people of the future.

That's why I went today. That's why I'll go next time. I'll always go, if I can.

And I'll try to keep smiling. Even while the house burns down.

Earth Day 2012

Bull of the Woods mushroom

Earth Day, 2012.

Two years after the BP-inflicted Macondo Oil disaster exploded onto the national consciousness, thousands of Gulf of Mexico dolphins are stranding themselves on the shore and food fish (red snapper, in particular) are pulled from the water bearing lesions and strange infections.  (But, don't worry!  FDA mucky-muck Robert W. Dickey assures us the fish are safe to eat!)  Meanwhile, gas prices are running at about $4 per gallon and Big Oil continues raking in money hand over fist. 

In these economically shaky times, environmental worries recede before the urgent and immediate concerns of people struggling in the pitiless currents of a "free-market economy."

Cue Dick Cheney and the resource extraction pirates.  Start the chanting and the disinformation campaigns.  "Drill, baby, drill!"   "Tree-hugging hippies want to take your jobs."  "Global warming is a hoax!"

Even if they don't believe it, people will espouse that kind of claptrap to assuage any vague discomfort that might arise from watching Creation wither before mankind's rapacious appetites.

I don't know.

We were born into this world, full of beauties and wonders.  It doesn't seem right that we should deny these things --the Siberian tigers, the white rhinoceroses, the Northern Spotted Owls, the Amazonian rainforests, the Great Coral reef --to the people of the future.

More about where we at

Since respected commenters object to the thesis of the Hedges' article I mentioned in my previous post, I'd like to clarify my position a bit.

Is the United States really "over the cliff?"

Dark, reactionary forces seem to be in ascent.  Not just here, in the United States, but all over the globe.  Our national debt is staggering.  Our treasure, which has been squandered in military adventures and short-sighted, greedy policies, is even now leaving our shores for China and India.  Our empire is in decline.  And history offers countless examples of empire in decline that shed light on our potential future.  Rome, 455?  Paris, 1793?  Moscow, 1917? 

(Further, from a purely biological aspect, things look bleak.  Species die-off, global warming, disappearing aquifers, deforestation... it's all leading to something, people.  A while back, I posited an idea (Final Days) about the repercussions of the relatively sudden explosion of the human population on Earth. I haven't read or heard anything to dissipate my fears since then.)

It ain't no picnic getting up in the morning thinking that this country has already seen its best days.  But I can't dismiss the evidence I see all around me.  As I see it, our best hope is that we can somehow accept the new reality with wisdom and grace. I don't hold out much hope on that score.  November 2, 2004, dealt a mortal blow to my faith in my countrymen.

"[H]ippie optimism dies hard," says Joe Bageant, in his article, The Ants of Gaia.  I agree.  I cherish those moments of baseless optimism that come to me, unbidden and unexpected.  And I reserve an irrevocable faith in the Great Whatever:

All will be as it must.

Where we at?

Remember the springtime!

Christopher Hedges, in his recent article, "It's NOT Going to Be Okay," puts it this way:

The daily bleeding of thousands of jobs will soon turn our economic crisis into a political crisis. The street protests, strikes and riots that have rattled France, Turkey, Greece, Ukraine, Russia, Latvia, Lithuania, Bulgaria and Iceland will descend on us. It is only a matter of time. And not much time. When things start to go sour, when Barack Obama is exposed as a mortal waving a sword at a tidal wave, the United States could plunge into a long period of precarious social instability.

At no period in American history has our democracy been in such peril or has the possibility of totalitarianism been as real. Our way of life is over. Our profligate consumption is finished. Our children will never have the standard of living we had. And poverty and despair will sweep across the landscape like a plague. This is the bleak future. There is nothing President Obama can do to stop it. It has been decades in the making. It cannot be undone with a trillion or two trillion dollars in bailout money. Our empire is dying. Our economy has collapsed.

It seems doubtful that the best days of these United States are ahead of us.  Especially if our recent past is the measure by which we judge our future.  We've entered a dark period.

How will we, as a people, adjust to the new reality?  How will we learn to live with less --much less --than we have had before?

Hedges continues:

How will we cope with our decline? Will we cling to the absurd dreams of a superpower and a glorious tomorrow or will we responsibly face our stark new limitations? Will we heed those who are sober and rational, those who speak of a new simplicity and humility, or will we follow the demagogues and charlatans who rise up out of the slime in moments of crisis to offer fantastic visions? Will we radically transform our system to one that protects the ordinary citizen and fosters the common good, that defies the corporate state, or will we employ the brutality and technology of our internal security and surveillance apparatus to crush all dissent? We won't have to wait long to find out.

Rough sledding, eh?  Who needs some cinematic adaptation of a Cormac McCarthy novel?  Hedges depicts a bleak, frightening vision, made all the more terrifying in that it has proved itself countless times in the course of human events.  And we can see its proofs increasingly every day, all around us.

Do you believe in his vision?  I do.  (Oh, would it were not so!)

Dark Ages, here we come.

As to our condition and who is to blame for it --we've all got red hands, every one of us.  Hanging people won't do any good.  Nobody is as big as this.  Not Obama, not Reagan, not Junior, not even Dick Cheney. 

We've got a brave, new world on our very doorstep.  Can we find a way to welcome it?   

It's worth a shot, ain't it?

The very fate of humanity hangs in the balance.

Don't look now, but things might just be looking up

Is it just me?  Or does it seem that we just might be pulling out of this national nosedive that started way back in November 2000?  Quite suddenly, I think I might just detect a glimmer of hope for these United States.

President Obama is on a roll, right now.  If national politics could be likened to an NBA game, the President has suddenly found his "zone" the same way that Magic Johnson used to do back in the 80s.  You know?  Like when Magic would thread the needle with a no-look pass to find a streaking James Worthy for the throw-down, or Byron Scott all alone beyond the arc, feet planted and square to the basket.

Big wins at home and on the road

The President won big, politically, with health care reform.  Polls show that the public is rapidly moving toward solid approval of the new law.  But apart from that huge victory, the President this week also rolled out a "Mortgage Modification Assistance" plan aimed at addressing the national foreclosure problem.  Also, Congress overcame an "intense" lobbying effort by Big Banks to pass legislation that forces the banks out of the student loan business.  Now students can borrow for college tuition directly from the government without having to give a cut to private bankers (the very same who nearly destroyed our financial system in 2008).  I got through college with my Guaranteed Student Loan and I'm glad students today will have that same opportunity.

These accomplishments in and of themselves would comprise an ambitious presidential agenda for an entire term, and this president has been in office for just over one year!

The partnership between the President and his former rival, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is working very well, apparently.  On the foreign policy front, the President announced a nuclear weapons reduction treaty with Russia, continuing the START program that Ronnie Raygun initiated back in the 80s.  Also, the President let Bibi Netanyahu know that the United States does not approve of new Jewish settlements in the West Bank, winning the praise of none other than Bush consiglierie, James Baker.  Then, the President flew to Afghanistan to rally the troops and put some pressure on Junior's favorite marionette, Hamid Karzai.

It seems apparent that President Obama is proving himself worthy of the respect that the rest of the world hungers to give him.  (Of course, Junior set the bar pretty low.  Heh.) 

 Left to right:  Ensign, DeMint, Coburn, Richard Shelby (AL) and Vitter (sans diaper)

GOP disasters

Meanwhile, the Republicans are in disarray.  Although one would think they might have become accustomed to defeat, they are reeling after their humiliation in the health care debate.

Senators Jim DeMint (R-SC), Coburn (R-OK) and Brownback (R-KS) are now drawing attention for having lived in a posh Washington DC boarding house while paying subsidized rent by unidentified parties.  (But no quid pro quo, eh?  Yeah, right!)  And, of course, Senator John Ensign's shenanigans smell worse by the day.  (But, hey?  How 'bout that Senator Vitter?)

The long simmering feud between the various oh-so-noxious factions of the GOP is erupting into full scale war, with tea-baggers challenging and threatening to destroy such GOP paragons as Senator Bob Bennett of Utah, Florida Governor Charlie Crist, and even Mad Johnny McCain himself!

Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele just got into the stew (again) with reports that the RNC comp'ed a visit by donors to a fetish nightclub in Los Angeles.  (It's called "Voyeur.")  Add this to the long list of gaffes the chairman has compiled during his term and one begins to wonder if he's not a Fifth Column Democrat.

Americans waking up

Although the spike in militia and racist group memberships is undeniable, it is not surprising.  This is the traditional nativist/Know-Nothing strain of American politics that has always existed.  As President Carter said last year, there is a deep current of racism in this country, and there are those who can never accept the idea of an African-American as their president. As long as that particular faction holds the levers of power within the GOP, the party will remain in the political wilderness.  If there are moderate elements in the GOP, those elements must purge party ranks of the racists and reactionaries.  But, considering how deeply entrenched are the bigots within that party, it will be some time before they have their house in order.

I'm confident that the "vast middle" of this country, to the extent that such exists, will recognize the real accomplishments of this president, will distinguish the differences his policies have made in their lives.  All the Glen Beck hysteria and frothing vitriol will disgust them and they'll turn away. 

So, let me urge fellow progressives to take a moment to smell the roses.  Our president is on a roll, our political opponents are bewildered and lost, and this economy is starting to show signs of life.

Don't look now, but...

Suburbia: terminally-ill

Check this not-for-the-faint-at-heart video. It is well worth the effort for those concerned with the future of our civilization:



If you're like me, you find it somewhat alarming. It isn't that the revelations in this video are new. In fact, they've been around for a while. The video discusses evidence that the world is rapidly approaching, or may indeed have already passed, its capacity to produce oil (you know? "Peak oil" theory?) and then speculates on the repercussions that development will have on civilization.

This video looks to have been made several years ago, but the progression of world events has only made it more relevant. Last year's collapse of financial markets, the interminable death rattle of America's automobile manufacturing industry and its jetliner transportation system, the bankruptcy of government at all levels: these have all been predicted.

Next up on the death-watch list? Suburbia. The suburban lifestyle simply cannot function without access to cheap energy, mostly in the form of abundant, cheap gasoline. Gas to transport suburbanites to their jobs and to far flung markets that are supplied with goods manufactured or grown entire continents away.

Well, if James Howard Kunstler and the other experts in this video are right, that's all coming to an end.

And what will come after? No one can know, of course. But, as discussed in the video, the possible futures range anywhere from apocalyptic societal collapse, anarchy, and a new Dark Ages to a massive refocusing and reassessment of our society geared toward local production and government and reduced consumption.

Either way, there is going to be a period of time when there will be a whole lot of disillusioned, angry suburbanites struggling to find a new state of existence.

Wasteland...

I can't find anything that sounds even remotely credible to counter the arguments and theories presented in this video. And therefore, it rings true. It's a frightening thought: the idea that we are being compelled to radically change our way of life.

We're in for a rough ride, but if one result of all the turbulence is a resurgence of local communities, with neighbors helping neighbors, and individuals engaged in meaningful productive work, growing food, providing useful services --well, that, at least, would be an improvement over what we have today.

In the end, I just try to fall back on my belief in the inherent goodness of people. What else have we got?

Nervous yet?

I don't necessarily want to come across as the wild-eyed madman, raving about the end of the world, but an ever-increasing number of developments indicate that something Big^TM is afoot.

Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson hasn't even finished doling out the $700 billion to the various collapsing financial institutions, and it is already becoming apparent that the much-touted bailout that was going to save us from a new Great Depression isn't going to work. This morning the Dow Jones Industrial Average has fallen below the 10000 mark for the first time in 4 years. The crisis is global. The Russian and Brazilian markets halted trading today to stave off a panic among traders in those countries. The Euro is collapsing. The states of California and Massachusetts have both applied to the US Treasury for emergency loans to allow their governments to continue to function.

That's just a far-from-exhaustive sketch of the global financial situation.

There is also the ominous news that the US military's Northern Command is being deployed within the United States, ostensibly to deal with catastrophes, terrorist attacks, and natural disasters. (I'm no lawyer, but this would seem to be a violation of the Posse Comitatus Act, no?)

There's a gas panic occurring in the southeastern US, just as the northern hemisphere descends into winter. Although there has been a lull recently, simmering worries about the availability of fuel and food remain a concern on a global level.

Tense international hot-spots threaten to erupt at any time, whether it is the continuing conflict between Russia and Georgia, the simmering problems in Iraq, the incredibly dangerous situation in Pakistan, or the old stand-by crisis of Israel and Palestine.

American political leadership, whether the administration or the Congress, seems woefully inadequate for any kind of meaningful action, even if there was someone that had a clear idea of what to do.

Well, if you're not nervous, good for you. Me? I'm scared as hell. I haven't had the courage or desire to even glimpse at my 401K plan for over a month, and, I kid you not, dear reader, I was just thankful that my last paycheck cleared so Maty and I could fill up the refrigerator.

The dire predictions that Jim Kunstler of Clusterf**k Nation has been making for the last year are all coming true. But even he doesn't know what is coming next. Although I'm still ardently supporting Barack Obama, this year's presidential race could very well prove to be irrelevant: regardless of who wins, the pace of events may dictate the course of action for either candidate, never mind what was said during the campaign.

We're in uncharted waters, folks. It's going to get more than a little choppy.

Death of an American summer

My beautiful city

Every year, when summer gives way to fall, I am assailed by feelings of regret and sadness. It's as if I am losing something precious, losing it forever, and that from here to the rest of my little piece of eternity, all I will have are memories of this lost treasure. Because each summer is a treasure. Each sunny day, where life is easy and relaxed and happy is a precious gift. And when the gift is gone, well...Joni Mitchell said it best: "Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone?"

Willamette River

For those of us in the northern hemisphere, the fall equinox is behind us, and the days are shortening at a rapid pace. In Portland, this weekend, we got a wonderful two days of sun and mild temperatures, and even though it is officially autumn, the evenings were like those of the high summer that are alive with people sitting at the sidewalk cafes, talking late into the night, drinking beer, laughing, enjoying life.

View from the Springwater Corridor

I went for a bike ride on Sunday, pedaling first through the surface streets of Southeast Portland, then on the east bank of the Willamette River along the Springwater Corridor. I crossed to the west side over Hawthorne Bridge, took a spin through Waterfront Park, then turned east at the Steel Bridge and headed for home in the Hawthorne district.

Enjoying the good weather at Waterfront Park

As I rode along, I saw my fellow Oregonians out enjoying the good weather. My solipsistic nature no doubt causes me to project my own feelings onto the people around me, but it seemed that as I saw the families riding their bicycles, the readers laying on blankets in the park, the couples strolling along the river, admiring the view, I had the sense that the regret I was feeling was shared by my fellow citizens. Summer is gone, and the dark days of winter are looming.

We're Oregonians, after all, and once you've experienced an Oregon rainy season, you know that weekends like this last one will fade to dreamy memories long about January or February.

But, my regret (and again projecting onto the people around me, their regret) is not solely due to the summer's annual death, but to the death of our American summer. With the pending financial crisis that looms, with banks closing, with a gas panic occurring even now, this very moment, in the southeastern United States, with a Russian bear claw resting on our Tblisi jugular vein, a lack of trust in the American financial system, and a fierce cultural divide within our country, dark days are ahead. And everyone seems to know it.

Adieu, vous bon temps.

So, yes, brothers and sisters, let's raise our glasses today, and let's laugh while we can, for as long as we can. The darkness and gloom of winter are on the way. The winter of our American prosperity, the winter of our hope.

Play, sweet fiddler, play

The muffled wails of doomed humanity,
Ghostly signatures of a world aflame;

Somewhere not far away a soldier dies,
His unborn child will know a photograph;

A field of sand, an arid oasis,
Our hopes shrunk like mountainous ice, adrift;

The whale song is sad elegy spun out,
Through black void to some ET antenna;

A hand is poised above a field of white,
The whetted quill like hungry vulture's beak;

Words are my fiddle as the world burns bright;
I imagine you to ask "Why bother?"

So that I may then reply sublimely,
"For Christ's sake, I have got to do something."

One tiny step in the right direction

Stephen Covey's 1989 book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, was, for a time, the guiding text for my life. I remember reading the book, back in the early 90's and being attracted to its positiveness, its hopefulness, its common-sense approach to becoming a better person.

In particular, the first of Covey's seven habits, Be proactive, involves defining one's circle of concern, and within that, one's circle of influence. A quick definition of the concept is this: rather than focus on worries over which one has no control, focus on actions one can take that may effect those worries.

For example, one may worry about global warming and environmental degradation. But, Covey argues, it is far more effective to focus on taking steps that might have a positive impact on these issues. Nothing new in this idea, right? Just common sense. That is one of the most attractive aspects of Covey's book: it illuminates concepts that one immediately recognizes as true through one's inherent human wisdom.

Well, I'm happy to say that I've begun operating within my own circle of influence with a few small actions aimed at addressing a number of worries in my circle of concern. Namely, money worries, global warming, and environmental degradation.

First, the stats: My daily commute to and from work is approximately 50 miles. My car gets about 23 miles per gallon. Therefore, to get to and from work by driving my car requires that I burn 2.17 gallons of gas. Aside from the obvious destructive emissions associated with burning fuel, at $4.25/gallon in Portland as of today, the monetary cost of getting to and from work using my car is $9.22. To quote Tony Montana: Tha's no duckwalk.

So, one action I have taken within my circle of influence is to make an arrangement with a coworker, wherein we will carpool two days/week. I'll drive one of the days, and he the other. That reduces my weekly commuting costs by 20% per week right off the bat.

Then, I have negotiated with my employer to arrange a work-from-home agreement, wherein I will telecommute one day per week. Another 20% off my commuting costs.

Lastly, I have pulled my bicycle out of the basement,and bought a book of Trimet bus tickets. At least one day per week, I ride my bike to downtown Portland, catch the bus that will take me down the interstate close to my work, and then ride the last mile or so. Each Trimet ticket is $2.50, and my commute will require that I use 2 per day, for a total of $5....slightly more than half the cost of driving myself.

Now, given that I must commute to work 5 times per week, the cost-effectiveness of my new habits become apparent:

Drive myself:
5 X 9.22 = $46.10

Carpool/bike/bus/telecommute/drive:
1 X 5.00 = $5.00 (bike/bus day)
1 X 0 = $0.00 (carpool ride day)
1 X 0 = $0.00 (telecommute day)
2 X 9.22 = 18.44 (drive days)
Total: $23.44

Now, if I persist with this arrangement, in one year's time, my financial savings will be $1178.32! Of course, this doesn't account for vacation time, and holidays, and other times when I will not commute, nor for those times when other factors will require that I drive. Nonetheless, that's a nice little chunk of change.

Good ol' Trimet

And I'll be contributing less to general environmental degradation, and wear and tear on our infrastructure, to say nothing of the wear and tear on my car. Plus, the biking will give me another boost in getting into better shape physically, and will arm me with another positive factor in my struggle against depression.

These are small steps, granted. But, as the ancient Chinese proverb tells us: A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. And I do believe that the preponderance of individual human actions will be the biggest determinant in the fate that awaits us all.

The crisis is here...

Folks, the house is on fire...

Eugene, over at Pudgy Indian, has a great blog entry from May 27th. You can read it here. To summarize, he points to the recent, sudden closure of 6 Chili's restaurants in Oregon as an omen of the catastrophe that is coming our way --check that --the catastrophe that is now upon us.

The price of crude oil has sky-rocketed from approximately $23/barrel in the summer of 2001 to over $125/barrel today. As the shock waves of this disastrous development burn through the wiring of our live-for-today economy, it would behoove us to brace ourselves. We can all expect rude awakenings similar to that experienced by the 200 or so former employees of Chili's restaurant who suddenly found their places of employment shut down.

Soon, maybe before the summer is out, other manifestations of the crisis will appear: cardboard signs reading "No Gas" appearing at gas station pumps, the discontinuation of airline flights between cities, produce bins at the grocery store being depleted and staying empty.

Our civilization is dependent on plentiful, cheap energy to feed us, to move us from place to place, to keep us healthy, clothed, and sheltered. As our global society's primary energy source, petroleum, attains peak production, and then begins to decline, our world economy is coming to a grinding halt... a terrible transition is at hand.

Although Junior Bush and his ilk have exacerbated and heightened the crisis, it is not their creation. This is something that has been anticipated for decades by any number of economists, sociologists, geologists, and historians. Alas, it has always been easiest to ignore the dire predictions and continue on as we have come to believe was our right. The responsibility for this mess belongs to all of us.

As Jim Kunstler relates in his post, Anxious Hiatus, the temptation is to continue on as we have done, to blithely ignore the terrifying consequences. And those that simply cannot face the facts, that are too terrified to stare down the beast that is confronting us... they have my sympathy. But the time is here. The house is on fire. The Titanic has hit the iceberg.

Am I scared? Hell, yes, I'm scared! But I won't end this post without hope. I can't.

I have been astounded, time and time again, by the inherent goodness and resourcefulness of motivated, sincere people. I don't believe that life in America will ever be the same. And the times ahead are going to be hard. But we can do this. We can get through this dark, looming cave and come out the other side with something good. Something built on our love for each other; on our unwillingness to turn our backs when we see others in pain.

Keep the faith, people!

Recession, war and the need for an open dialog

Yesterday, at work, we got the news that our "head count" would be reduced. Two of my immediate coworkers were "let go" along with 400 others throughout the company. The news was startling, but, on reflection, not too surprising. I believe that these lay-offs are harbingers for the coming storm. My company is, I believe, moving in anticipation of an economic downturn that everyone sees coming.

Poor horse is played out...

The vaunted and glorified American consumer who, for so long, has kept the global economy afloat with his insatiable appetite for whiz-bang gadgets, frivolous services, and cheaply-made goods, all purchased on credit, is becoming aware that a transition is at hand.

Just as a drunken reveler will, at the break of day, find that his good-time friends, those who egged him on and happily drank at his expense, have slunk away when the bill comes due, so, too, are the American people finding that the corporate interests and corrupt politicians now have no answers.

The hard times are coming. Can we be honest enough to admit it? Decades of hedonistic living are coming to an end. From approximately 1980, when Ronald Reagan pooh-poohed Jimmy Carter's admonitions about an impending energy crisis, to the present day, Americans have been living as if there were no tomorrow. We think nothing of jumping in the car and driving 3 blocks to the store to pick up a pack of gum. We pour thousands of gallons of water on our front lawns so we can have patches of green in the middle of deserts. We seize resources from foreign lands at gun point, and murder and kill in the name of "patriotism."

Our politicians, even now, prefer not to lead, prefer not to discomfit us with talk of sacrifice and determination. Remember what Junior said, after 911? "[G]et on the airlines, get about the business of America..."

Look at the rhetoric they're using now: John McCain babbling about war, war, war, terrorists, terrorists, terrorists. His recent "misstatements" about al Qaeda's connections with Iran not only evoke unsettling thoughts about his age as it relates to his mental acuity, but illustrate his inability to think beyond war and aggression. Warlike rhetoric, he imagines, is the key to power. He has no clue about what is happening to our country.

Hillary Clinton seems unlikely to be able to attain the Democratic nomination without some fancy footwork, since she trails in the popular vote and in the number of elected delgates. So, she has resorted to the cut-throat politics of smear and slime, disparaging Obama rather than promoting herself. Well, she learned at the knee of the master, I suppose, having endured the most vile attacks that the Republican slime machine could manufacture. But, by using their tactics in her blind pursuit of power, she becomes one of them. She seems unaware of the need to unify, to move beyond the vicious political games in order to really address the issues at hand.

Barrack Obama, by contrast, has attempted to open real dialog in this country. With his speech on "race," recently, he has addressed a long-festering issue in the national psyche. The speech was an attempt at starting a real dialog. If we were to elect a president with that kind of courage, the courage to speak frankly and honestly, even when the words are uncomfortable, we would have taken a huge step toward doing what needs to be done to get this country back on track.

Obama transcends the old political game in which McCain and Hillary are still mired. Whether one agrees with his particular stance on any given issue is, in my opinion, less important than the knowledge that he will be willing to address issues openly, that he will engage in honest debate.

Wink, wink, nudge, nudge...

Hillary and McCain, both grasping indignantly at the power to which they believe they are entitled by virtue of having "played the game," turn a deaf ear to the daily tragedies that are transpiring for everyday Americans. The tragedies of economic insecurity, shattered futures, and war deaths are waved at vaguely with empty platitudes, while the wheels of their respective campaigns work away at dividing and undermining. In short, they continue in the vein of the Karl Rove method of politics.

This kind of campaigning does very little to assuage the doubts and fears of people like my unfortunate coworkers.

It could very well be that the time-tested tactics Hillary and McCain are employing, instilling fear and hatred and division, still have the juice to take down Obama. But if that happens, regardless of which of the two of them becomes President, it is imperative, it is vital, that he or she quickly adopt Obama's message of unity and his willingness to face difficult issues head-on. Can we dare to hope that either would have wisdom enough to do it?

For my part, I'm desperate for Obama.

A chance at a real dialog...

To despair is to turn one's back on God

The title of this post is a quotation from Marilla Cuthbert, a character in Lucy Maud Montgomery's classic, Anne of Green Gables. And this post is a rebuke of the despair in which I, Dade Cariaga, occasionally indulge when I think of the magnitude of the mess that we have on our hands.

Yes, we are in a very bad place economically, politically, socially. Yes, it is going to get worse. Yes, our lives as Americans are going to change in ways that we can't foresee and that will disrupt the insular illusion of security to which we cling. None of us is going to escape the coming storm.

Don't believe me? Take a look at the price-per-gallon display next time you pull into a gas station. Scan the headlines from Wall Street. Check out what the Federal Reserve is doing today. Look at how the dollar is performing on the foreign exchange. All the gurus that sit on the boards of the corporate banks and financial institutions are on the verge of a panic. But that's not all: the Iraq war, which is draining our national treasury to the tune of $275 million per day, is still raging full blast. Big Dick and nutty John McCain were just over there yesterday patting themselves on the back over the success of the endeavor. And then there are the chronic problems that are rapidly approaching crisis proportions: global warming, peak oil, the Palestine issue, Pakistan's instability.

The Bush administration is the epitome of a government run to benefit the monied interests at the expense of the common people. But, as one might expect, with their sole motive being the enrichment of themselves, they have been revealed as being completely unconcerned with the lives of the people below them, whom they view as mere resources. Well, their time is coming to an end. All but the very thickest of Americans are aware of their crimes and ineptitude now.

So, yes, the forecast is bleak. Nonetheless, there is still reason --strike that --there is still the obligation to hope. Historically, we've been in tough spots before. This country overcame the brutal economic blight of the Great Depression with pluck and determination, by uniting, by putting aside minor differences and changing the zeitgeist that was spawned out of the carefree, live-for-today Roaring 20's. So, now, we must unite again to face the consequences of the Junior Bush era of corporate greed and the plunder of the commonwealth by private interests.


Well, as I just witnessed last weekend, there are still plenty of people that are willing to roll up their sleeves and do what is necessary to fix things. When it gets bad enough (and, people, we're there), we will put aside our trivial differences and get to work on the repairs. When we have a government that helps us rather than hinders us, we will make progress on things like alternative energy, international peace, fair trade policies, universal health care and so much more.

We can. We must. We will.

Paint a picture, write a poem!

Some days, it just gets to you...you know?

I'm talking about the doom and dread that pervades the subconscious of those of us who are managing to survive without too much trouble.

For much of the world, the perils of existential examination are moot: when you're picking through a garbage dump outside of Calcutta for your dinner, you're probably not inclined to ponder the larger meaning of life. But for those of us blessed (and I do mean blessed) with having, through the accident of Fate, been brought into a kinder and gentler version of the world, the menace of moral and existential introspection loom. To be sure, we do what we can to avoid it, with our televisions and computers and Ipods and name-your-distractions. But sometimes, perhaps when some defective person, unable to stave off despair, gets drunk and drives his car into a power line, the lights flicker off, the television screen goes dead, and we are stuck in our homes, blindly groping for something to grab onto and avoid falling into the abyss. We sense the monster lurking in the darkness.

Because, whether or not each of us has the courage to face it, the fact remains that these mortal coils through which we view this particular aspect of the Great Creation will eventually falter, breakdown, and cease functioning altogether. It's true individually, and it's true in the larger, collective sense.

You know it, don't you? Deep in your heart, you know it. And it sears like cold iron. It's not just that each of us is destined to die, but that civilization, society, indeed, the entire human species cannot last forever.

In its infinite mercy, the Great Whatever endowed us with a mere one-dimensional perception of time. We cannot foresee the end. We can only sense that it is out there, looming. And it is natural to be afraid. Not afraid for ourselves, individually, but afraid for those whom we love, and for the things we've created.

Fans of Star Trek: The Next Generation may recall perhaps, the episode, entitled "The Inner Light," in which Captain Jean-Luc Piccard finds himself in a dream world that is facing environmental catastrophe. The people on this doomed planet ultimately realize that their time as a race is coming to an end. They endeavor to pool their resources and work together to create a space probe containing information about their culture and their people, a commemoration of themselves, which they launch in the hopes that someone somewhere will find it, unlock its secrets, and remember this long lost people.

When I have the courage to face it (maybe "courage" isn't the right word, I don't know), my heart breaks for this beautiful, hateful, vulgar, gentle, noble, virtuous, and infinitely-complex thing we call humanity. In my heart, I know we cannot be saved.

But we can leave something behind, can't we? We can put down a marker for some who-knows-what in some far-flung who-knows-where that we were here, and that we were, in our virtuous and horrible and noble and fallible way, beautiful. Can't we?

In the end, if there is anything we can leave behind that will relate what we are or were, I believe it is our art. So, let me urge you: For all our sakes, paint a picture! Write a poem! Shout out our "mighty YOP!" Don't do it for yourselves; do it for all of us. Our art can be our legacy, our "probe" into the Great Beyond.

In that way, we can live on.

Final Days

Freshly rejuvenated from a relaxing weekend, and hopeful in spite of it all, I am yet perplexed to find that, as I pondered a topic for today's blog, I ultimately (no pun intended) settled on a topic that would seem at odds with a hopeful attitude: the Final Days.

Of course, the End of the World has been predicted probably for as long as human beings have been able to articulate thoughts in verbal form. And at times, it surely must have seemed that such predictions had come to pass (for example, during the Black Death or in the worst days of the Great War). But, so far, obviously, such predictions have been unfulfilled, and those wild-eyed predictors of humanity's demise have been relegated to "crackpot" status.

Yet......

From this particular vantage point in history, it would seem that the trajectories of a number of potential crises are set to converge in the relatively near future. Check out the talk about peak oil, or about impending financial Armageddon, or about bird flu pandemic, or global warming and environmental degradation. Read Joe Bageant's piece, Ants in a Jar.

I recently read Jared Diamond's excellent book, Guns, Germs, and Steel. The book offers an anthropological explanation for the relative "progress" of different peoples in different parts of the world. Of particular interest was the discussion of the people of Easter Island, who, discovering an isolated paradise in the Pacific ocean, settled and thrived to the point where they eventually destroyed the very land on which they lived (through deforestation, mainly). Their end was ugly: cannibalism, fratricide, and (one can only imagine) despair. I wonder, were there wild-eyed prophets among them, during the seeming height of their civilization that warned of impending doom?

Suppose, just for a moment, that we could examine humanity's history from afar, millions of years from now. The world's population of human hunter-gatherers was relatively stable at something less than 100 million for hundreds of thousands of years before it began migrating out of Africa. The migration began shortly after the Great Leap Forward some 50-100 thousand years ago. Even then, population growth was linear up to the Agricultural Revolution which occurred some 12000 years ago. At that point, there is an exponential growth in the human population to the point where today, it is approaching some 6 billion souls. That is a 6000% increase in population in a scant 12000 years (1% of the accumulated time of human existence).

If the dire predictions of the end of humanity are true, could it not be said that our species became the victim of its highly-evolved brain? Could it not be said that some genetic mutation conferred the ability for analysis and abstract thought upon humans which caused them to develop agriculture? And, could it not be inferred, then, that agriculture caused the human population to spiral out of control and thereby doomed it?

Of course, we can't answer these questions. And it is hardly uplifting to contemplate them. But, referring again to Mr. Bageant's article, we can always do that small bit that fate has placed within our tiny circle of perception, and do it nobly, in spite of its seeming futility.

The Buddhists may have it right, anyway. A coworker told me a joke today that is serendipitously apropos: A Buddhist walks up to a hot dog stand. He says to the vendor: Make me one with everything.