What To Expect When You Are Collapsing

I don't know exactly what the future will look like. But I do know that the world will look very different by the time my son grows up. Like most parents I spend a lot of time trying to make informed choices about raising my child. But I think I have different concerns from the average American and if you have found your way to this blog you probably do too (welcome). My worries don't revolve around the latest article about kids and their social media and their electronic dance music, or whatever story has old men shaking their fists at children these days. Though I certainly have my own thoughts on teaching kids healthy media habits and I don't let my toddler anywhere near a television.

Instead, I have in mind the very volatile ecological, economic, cultural, and political landscape we live in today. Peak oil, climate change, income inequality, high unemployment, legislative gridlock, crumbling infrastructure, and a shaky-legged American empire all present problems we will have to face whether we like it or not. The fact that we have avoided these problems for so long and many people still refuse to even acknowledge their existence will make them even tougher to handle. I used to wonder whether technology could solve our problems (many of which it created itself), or if industrial civilization would slowly fall apart. The older I get the more it seems like the latter. I have noticed how the Futurama predictions of the past never happened and many of the current technological promises I read these days seem cut from the same cloth as the dreams of yesteryear that never came true. I find it unlikely, for example, that we will build literal and figurative pipe dreams like the hyperloop, when we can't even maintain our roads and bridges.

I realize the lifestyle of the average middle class American can only exist because of an abundance of cheap energy made possible by fossil fuels. As these resources become more scarce this lifestyle and much of the world I have grown up with will start to slowly disappear. Anyone paying close attention can see that this has already started to happen. Identifying a problem is one matter, responding to it effectively is another. So in the face of all these problems I found myself asking the old question:  what is to be done? 

As I started to grapple with this question I found a great blog that has helped guide me through making important changes in my life. Many people familiar with peak oil and other problems of our age might already read The Archdruid Report written by John Michael Greer. His work has offered not only a connection to others who can see the cracks in industrial civilization, but also useful ways of coping that I have adapted for my own circumstances. I have applied many of his lessons to my own life and I feel that my experience can help others even further. I still have more changes I want to make, but I feel far enough along that I can offer something to people making a similar transition.

So what kind of changes did I make and why do I think other people would benefit from reading about them? Did I start a farm? No, though we did move from an apartment in Brooklyn to a house in Poughkeepsie with enough room for a decent sized garden. I made a much less dramatic change. I decided to be a stay-at-home dad and start focusing on things I can make and do at home. That might not seem like a big deal, but I guess that is the point. It is something within most people's reach. The home economy can produce a lot of things we have become accustomed to buying. Making or doing things yourself lets you have them for a fraction of the price it would cost you to buy them and the results often beat the pants off what you could purchase. 

Unlike picking up and moving to a farm (not a feasible option for many people for a variety of reasons) you can start doing and making things at home today. Sure it might take a while to realize the full potential of what you can produce at home, but that's fine. You can ease your way into the process one step at a time and soon you will look back to find you have accumulated a number of useful skills and resources. It takes some time to learn some of these skills, but not as much as you might think and once you learn how to bake your own bread, for example, you won't want to pay more more for a store bought loaf that doesn't taste as good. Frankly, our society often sells us the erroneous notion that we can make big changes in an instant. We can make the decision to change rather quickly (though even that process can happen gradually), but putting an idea into action takes some time. Look at this positively, you don't need to change all at once. You can ease your way into it, though the sooner you start the better. Or as John Michael Greer says, "collapse now and avoid the rush."

So what kind of help will you find in this blog? I will certainly share some of my favorite recipes and instructions for useful DIY projects. But those things will serve as an aside to a weekly blog that outlines broader strategies for getting the most out of the home economy and parenting in an age of diminishing fossil fuels. I plan to give concrete advice, but I also hope to inspire you to find solutions that work best for your situation. Posts will often deal with John Michael Greer's useful acronym L.E.S.S. (Less Energy Stimulation and Stuff). When relevant I will suggest books on that week's topic. You certainly don't need to be a parent or a stay-at-home partner of any kind to get something from this blog, but I will often advocate for having one partner stay at home as I find this an option that more people should consider no matter what their gender. I think it makes a lot of economic sense for most people and the next post will deal with this in more depth.

I have not collapsed as far as I would like. Some of my skills are more advanced than others and I still have a lot more projects I want to pursue. I hope this will make the blog more accessible to someone trying to break free of the mainstream. Likewise, my son is only 19 months old, so I can't say I have seen it all as a parent. But, for whatever the proud declarations of a father are worth, I feel like I have done a good job thus far and often get compliments on his intelligence which I attribute to keeping him away from screens, getting him in nature, letting him explore, and trying to foster communication by talking, reading, singing, and listening to him as much as possible.

I hope to bring a unique and useful perspective on these topics. I used to work as a public librarian in one of the rougher neighborhoods in Brooklyn. So I feel I can offer a combination of grit, commonsense, and a knack for evaluating available information and communicating it to people of diverse backgrounds. I also bring an earnest desire to make important changes and a desire to share what I have learned. It should make for an interesting journey and an interesting blog. Thank you for reading.

Suggested Reading:

Green Wizardry by John Michael Greer

This book gives a lot of great information on gardening, cooking, preserving food, passive solar technology, and thinking in whole systems (very useful for waking up from the slumber our culture lulled many folks into). Each chapter includes useful exercises and suggested reading on that chapter's topic. It also introduces the reader to the concept of L.E.S.S. which I plan to discuss in an upcoming post.