Don't be jealous guys. Permies was backing my play long before I got here. (well, maybe only a quarter of their mods)I am all about connecting people. That is how we survive. I have to be very polite there.(they censured me once in that series and they are already used to me being the guy that breaks all the rules but puts up with it because I perform useful thoughts. I have to be mildly thoughtful there. You are the folks I drink with.
By the way, David, excellent article. I will try to spread it. I have been reluctant to say... We have an old Massey... Yah, that one. The exact one. It runs but it "Clanks!" when it pulls and throws itself out of gear. We spent too much already.I hold it for the exact reason you know it can be turned into. I am too mechanically uninclined...
but I know the bar of gold I am holding.
Not jealous. I am your biggest fan.
My issue is not with permaculture, or with permies, really. I run into the same issues with doomers of all stripes. And I see the usual bias in the thread over there that you linked to.....that is the idea that anyone who recognizes the unsustainable nature of BAU is somehow obligated to change it, or drop out of it, and stop supporting it.
I see a lot of people who are very judge-y about that...but if you happen to examine their own personal narrative, very, very few of those people ARE NOT hooked up to BAU in some way. But that doesn't stop them from pointing fingers. Everybody needs somebody to look down on.
Like RE looks down on me for making investments.
I'll pick on RE because we're friends, and we fight all the time anyway, and we've gotten past all the real hard feelings. The truth is that RE HAS investments. Maybe he isn't as involved in chasing money as I am, but he is very much a prisoner of BAU...especially since he became disabled. But he rides my ass, calls me rich because I make a good living, and thinks I'm greedy because I doggedly pursue my investment strategy in the face of collapse. And stupid, because I don't quit working and enjoy what's left of the planet while I still can.
Young permies think people like me are either clueless or heartless, or greedy.....but let's see how they feel when they're in their 60's and looking at how they're going to pay for their groceries and rent when they can't work anymore.
You and your partner worked in some version of BAU and saved the bucks to do what you're doing. Most permies work some kind of job. I (and a couple of other people I know) used to catch flack from a permie guy I knew who was active on the local Transition network here. You could almost hear him spit when he called us "survivalists" which he definitely used as a pejorative term. I was naive back then.
Turned out he was a retired guy who had worked his whole career at the local quasi-governmental power utility. People like that...and academics, college professors, various people who have a lot of education but very little exposure to the school of hard knocks....they are very eager to tell people like me how wrong I am to invest in real estate and stocks and cryptos....but they mostly ALL have a 401K that somebody else funds and manages, or a government pension....petty bureaucrats have that same mindset.
Young people are just heart-oriented instead of head-oriented. And it's so easy to point the finger, especially when you have nothing to lose, and you're angry that some boomer stole your future. I get that.... And many of them think they can make big changes that will save the world, or that we should try, even if that looks like it might not work.
I'm way past worrying what other people think of my strategies. Call me a prepper. Call me a survivalist. Call me an adapter (not a bad term, I get where you're coming from). I don't give a flying shit.
Collapse is inevitable, but like K-Dog said, it's ongoing and uneven. Climate change is pretty much guaranteed to kill off a lot of people. There are too many people anyway, and I don't care about saving them all. I think about the next generation in my own family as much as I can. And about my partner, who stands to outlive me by decades.
I have nothing to prove to anyone, and I know as much about what's happening in this current reality as anyone else does. So I do what seems right for me, and just avoid talking to people who have some unrealistic and heroic, altruistic, "save the animals, save the planet, create a sustainable world" POV.
In my view, even the best permaculturists are not as well prepped as good farmers who have land and understand growing food.
And money is a valuable tool.
I have five tractors. One that is new and has a "mortgage", but it's half paid now, time goes by fast at my age. It will farm like a mofo until the diesel runs out. Two need a little work but are well worth fixing (until the diesel runs out). The fourth is a real backhoe, which is super valuable (until the diesel runs out). The fifth is a good parts tractor for the backhoe. It's old.
My father tried to teach me how to plow behind a mule. I'm not good at it, but unlike most people, I HAVE actually done it. I could do it. I know permies hate plows. Gimme a plow when TSHTF. Single row garden implements. That all I need. I have a shit-ton of seeds and three months after the apocalypse, I'll be eating from a huge garden. In the meantime, I also practice the raised bed tech that everybody uses now.
I have a huge hoophouse greenhouse and the basics to do aquaculture. I can make electricity for several years if the grid goes dark. I still have a long list of stuff I'd love to acquire, stuff that might come in real handy. I check more stuff off on that list every year.
There isn't much useful knowledge I'm likely to need when TSHTF that I haven't already accumulated, not on my laptop, but in my own personal neural tissues. I'm about as ready as i can be. I like the money I still make taking care of patients, and that's a skill I want to maintain anyway, so dropping out at this point....is pointless.
You're never ready enough or smart enough, or lucky enough to avoid catastrophe when climate change hits like a ton of bricks. You buys your ticket and you takes your chances.
If anybody wants my help for just about anything, I'm willing to help if I can. If they want to come at me from a critical mindset, or try to TELL me shit they think I don't already know? Well...fuck 'em.
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Topic: C5 Walks into a Diner... (Read 9805 times)
February 12, 2013, 03:53:15 AM