[JPL]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MrBean', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('JPL', '
')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!).

[Bas]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('JPL', '
')
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

[JPL]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Bas', '
')
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 : (

[Bas]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('JPL', '
')
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

[JPL]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Bas', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('JPL', '
')
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

[MrBean]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('JPL', '
')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

[JPL]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MrBean', '
')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.

[jbeckton]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MrBean', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jbeckton', '
')1) Are you suggesting it is possible to back to hunter gatherer existence with the knowledge we have acquired?

[MrBean]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('JPL', '
')I generally get on very badly with other English eco-types which is one of the reasons why I left the place in the first instance.

If I come back the original reasons are not going to go away. Namely that without 'Land Reform' the nice little eco-projects going on right now are just a middle-class dream.

To feed a country of 60 million people on a land area that in a pre-fossil-fuel world, only supported a maximum of 10, is going to be quite a project...

This project cannot be achieved with windmills and recycling. The only way it can be done is to give land-access to the majority (80% plus) of the British population.

The only way (IMHO) this can now be done is through revolution. Revolution does not have to be violent - the Industrial Revolution changed Britain (& the rest of the world) in a non-violent way. Ghandi also inspired revolution - again non-violent - in his people.

The same has to happen in Britain. If I come back, I have no desire to lead this revolution, but I intend to be a part of it.

We have had our land taken away from us for long enough.

It is time to take it back.

JP

[JPL]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MrBean', '
')Ah, revolution! Since finding out, I've shifted from a passive Green voter (they suck) to active revolutionary socialist (they suck) to passive-aggressive anarchist (ok, they suck too, but slightly less so) to tree-hugging and shamanism.

I have yet to disappoint to the ecovillage network grass roots "revolution" by dropping out from modern society and becoming (trying to become) self reliant, perhaps I find chance to.

EU is not Cuba and has no time to become a likeness of it and develop the necessary sense of solidarity and skills of cooperation, to be able to shift orderly to large scale organic farming. Anarchism is basically an esthetic way of declaring oneself allready in revolution, great for various spectacles and publicity stunts, but does not bring food to the kids.

I really see no hope for Europe maintaining it's current levels of population, but a die-off is also due here - when and how severe and how fast I try not to speculate - but the elevator in my block of flats has been broken this time allready for two weeks and no repairmen seen yet. And this is Finland!!!

So unless Al Gore enters the race in the last last minute and wins it and uses his precidency to establish an ecototalitarian world governement (yep, and how likely is that?) I see no credible (meaning at least 5% likelihood of succeeding) scenario for a soft landing. Tough, but can't be helped. One could hope Europeans can learn to face death with dignity and compassion, but that is also a very small likelyhood compared to the revolutionary scenario of widespread berserker cannibalism...

In a nutshell: the great majority is not going to wake up to the reality before they get hungry, then they rob the supermarkets and then they die, miserably. They can't be helped, and I've now come to accept nor should they be. And unless one lives in a sustainable community of one sort or other, one cannot help anything or anybody, but is just one of the needy and useless.

[MrBean]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('JPL', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MrBean', '
')Ah, revolution! Since finding out, I've shifted from a passive Green voter (they suck) to active revolutionary socialist (they suck) to passive-aggressive anarchist (ok, they suck too, but slightly less so) to tree-hugging and shamanism.

I have yet to disappoint to the ecovillage network grass roots "revolution" by dropping out from modern society and becoming (trying to become) self reliant, perhaps I find chance to.

EU is not Cuba and has no time to become a likeness of it and develop the necessary sense of solidarity and skills of cooperation, to be able to shift orderly to large scale organic farming. Anarchism is basically an esthetic way of declaring oneself allready in revolution, great for various spectacles and publicity stunts, but does not bring food to the kids.

I really see no hope for Europe maintaining it's current levels of population, but a die-off is also due here - when and how severe and how fast I try not to speculate - but the elevator in my block of flats has been broken this time allready for two weeks and no repairmen seen yet. And this is Finland!!!

So unless Al Gore enters the race in the last last minute and wins it and uses his precidency to establish an ecototalitarian world governement (yep, and how likely is that?) I see no credible (meaning at least 5% likelihood of succeeding) scenario for a soft landing. Tough, but can't be helped. One could hope Europeans can learn to face death with dignity and compassion, but that is also a very small likelyhood compared to the revolutionary scenario of widespread berserker cannibalism...

In a nutshell: the great majority is not going to wake up to the reality before they get hungry, then they rob the supermarkets and then they die, miserably. They can't be helped, and I've now come to accept nor should they be. And unless one lives in a sustainable community of one sort or other, one cannot help anything or anybody, but is just one of the needy and useless.

[Denny]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('roccman', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', '
')Now and because of agriculture we have been lulled into "this is the way it has always been and is THE right way".

Well we know that agriculture was the single worst path we choose...today we now are living with its consequences.

[JPL]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MrBean', 'S')o, having become a lunatic borderline case between First and Fourth worlds, a schitzophrenic (but reasonably wholesome one), I'm certainly not against your revolution. I'm just at loss how it could be realized. Too much to heal, too much haste, so few healers. The Powers are now competing to rape even North Pole, the land below vanishing ice, and I can only hope that PO and other peaks hit them so hard and so soon that they have no time to.

Yep, I love Peak Oil. As Catullus said: "Odi et amo... et excrucior".

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Denny', 'I')t was farming which freed so many to do the more interesting pursuits in life, such as the arts, architecture and professions. It also freed others up to work in factories and provide mass produced goods from clothing to baby carriages, in abundance never seen before. I am talking of the industrial revolution, not the recent extrapolation into the Walmart mindset.

[Revi]

I love Peak Oil, but I don't think it's a good relationship. Peak Oil is a very nasty partner. She is going to wreck me in the end, but then again she'll wreck everybody else too.

Hard to fall in love with a concept so brutal and nihilistic as Peak Oil. Maybe that's why we love it so.

[threadbear]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MrBean', '
')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.

[abelardlindsay]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('threadbear', '
')My dad's mother's family-- shamanistic Nords. Some hunter gatherers are terribly violent, no respect for women, animals, etc... possession cults in Africa are like this. They are probably worse since they have come in contact with whites and urbanized. Their religion is then right out of it's original context.

Shamanism can easily segue into sorcery. I can tell you this from personal experience. Our society needs it, but it must be handled with extreme caution.

[CrudeAwakening]

A Kalahari bushman once said (to an anthropologist): "Why should we plant when there are so many mongongo nuts in the world?"

The laborious agricultural lifestyle doesn't appeal to the modern day hunter-gatherer.

Agriculture likely developed as a response to combinations of population pressure and climatic changes, forcing HGs to make better use of increasingly marginal land, until eventually the "old ways" were forgotten. Expropriation of the agricultural surplus allowed the formation of elites, priests and warrior classes, and the rest of "civilized" history follows. A few people sit on their asses while the majority do the hard work.

[MrBean]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('abelardlindsay', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('threadbear', '
')My dad's mother's family-- shamanistic Nords. Some hunter gatherers are terribly violent, no respect for women, animals, etc... possession cults in Africa are like this. They are probably worse since they have come in contact with whites and urbanized. Their religion is then right out of it's original context.

Shamanism can easily segue into sorcery. I can tell you this from personal experience. Our society needs it, but it must be handled with extreme caution.

[Dan_Browne]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('roccman', '1')) we will go back to the olduvai cliff