collapse leadership

COLLAPSE LEADERSHIP

Let's try again and see if it sticks ( i.e. I have the Web time to keep it up ).  The junk land listings.  Go to http://www.dirtcheapdirt.blogspot.com/ New post today.
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If you are feeling all bummed out and depressed and really need more laughs than you can get from reading my drivel, listen to Glen Beck ( Arguing with Idiots: How to Stop Small Minds and Big Government ). Today he was comparing the Bolshevik Revolution ( Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution ) to the Earth Hugger extremists that posted that four minute video about killing eco non-believers. I haven’t seen the video myself, so of course I’ll comment on it anyway. The people putting it out claimed it was supposed to be funny. Glen thought that it was the second coming of Nazism. I mean, seriously. Come on, Beck. The Birkenstockers have been braiding their armpit hair and screaming for the extermination of humanity ( one presumes with the exception of Sierra Club members ) for decades now. Making serious money, he employs researchers ( my research consists of trying to remember what I read from a book three years ago ) so you would think he knows this. So he is just enflaming the masses. Yes, I try to enflame the masses too. But my minion readership is far smaller than his so I’m doing less damage ( and I doubt any of you actually believe me, so I claim zero damage ).

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To the commenter asking how junk land trailer living ( Trailer Park Feng Shei - 6x6 Iron On Heat Transfer For White Material ) translated out to a family, I have covered that before. But because you’re new I’ll quickly go over it again. You set up in a trailer, if you are smart in a zoning liberal area, and immediately start to expand. Don’t move there the beginning of winter and expect to live crammed together for three months. Cabin fever ( Cabin Fever [dvd/limited Sell-thru Edition/special Outer Shellnla ) will short circuit the experiment ( wife- get those damn kids out of my hair or you get no nookie. Husband- kids, we’re moving back to town ). You can live together for the short period it takes to build a 8x8 adjoining cabin ( in my neck of the woods any stand alone structure under 100 square feet needs no building permit ), or better yet immediately move each kid into their own cheap tent as you quickly build. Or, if you have the money and no time, each kid gets their own junk van or trailer as their room ( and each must sacrifice a portion for the storage food ). The whole idea is to pay as you go and do it cheaply. As for the grey and black water problem, I would haul the waste at first if you need to wait on a septic ( myself, I would always build over capacity with septic for a margin or error ). You can place the waste tank in the pickup bed and use one of those uphill RV pumps to pump from the RV tank. Then go into town and find a RV waste dump. You go into town for groceries anyway. Of course, for long term you need an alternative. But here we are talking about a quick off grid set up to save on rent. Let me know if that doesn’t cover your questions. Leave another comment or just e-mail me. [ tomorrows post will be on family sewer solutions ]

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Societies leaders have almost never been capable of collapse management. It is like asking a frog to manage a flying school. But that frog can swim like no one else. I know some of you have a hard time envisioning society as anything other than a loving group hug. And I know you scoff at social Darwinists ( Social Darwinism in American Thought ). But if you look at man as any other animal pressured to survive from solar energy alone, you must acknowledge violence. Oh, look at the cute baby lions! Holy Friggin Crap!!!! Daddy lion just ate the cute little bastard. Welcome to the harsh reality of living within resource boundaries. It might be considered less cruel to eat surplus eaters than letting the whole tribe starve ( I know there is more involved in lion cannibalism, I believe the offspring must be biologically related or something [ sorry, my memory is sketchy here ] but the engrained behavior of population management is what I’m getting at ). Man procreates. More bodies ensure family strength and farm hands and warriors. Primitive hunter/gatherers ( The Hadza: Hunter-Gatherers of Tanzania (Origins of Human Behavior and Culture) ) ably managed their births, but their environment was less forgiving of surplus population. Once we went to agriculture we always have had the opposite problem which is not enough people. You needed muscle labor to dig irrigation systems. And you needed more farmers to feed the workers and a surplus to feed the warriors to protect the irrigation system. Leadership is focused on growth.

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Growth is a bad word right now. Growth has destroyed the planet, impoverished our middle class, etcetera. But growth has been normal for ten thousand years. While you have functioning farmland it is beneficial. When you run out of farmland ( Villeroy & Boch Design Naif mug # 5 Farmland ) it becomes a problem. But only if you didn’t use your growth to build an army that now goes forth to steal your neighbors farmland. We are that exact stage ourselves as we steal the oil needed to grow our crops. Wasteful SUV driving and pollution and whatever else we are doing to live in decadent luxury is besides the point. Food is the point and energy is needed to grow that food. Politics, economics, it is all window dressing. Focus on food and you know how things work and what we will do in the future. Growth is the answer, and always has been. Government that stays conservative to live within the energy and soil fertility is always overthrown by the neighboring government that mines their resources for the surplus needed to take what they don’t have.

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A successful government is based on growth to survive. So when a collapse comes along, say, the corn yield is off as the jungle sees a multi-year drought, you don’t have a leadership that can do anything other than grow ( say, by increasing irrigation or centralized retention ponds ). Only after collapse can a new government come along that thrives on sustainable leadership ( Sustainable Leadership (Jossey-Bass Leadership Library in Education) ). And that will be limited until the time growth becomes possible again. Which is why today you see “business as usual”. The power structure in charge ( and it doesn’t matter the make up, be they central bankers or corporate powers ) was reared on growth. It isn’t just that growth enriches them, it does, but that lack of growth endangers them. If you stop growing, another tribe invades and conquers you ( small village tribes, city states or vast nations, it is all the same ). Growth is survival. You can hate the wealth that goes along with power, but the reason most of us don’t care is because the payment for that wealth is to protect our lives ( and, yes, that is pretty much just protecting your slaves, but it ain’t like we have much choice ).

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When growth is survival, don’t expect the “sustainability” movement to ever catch on. They poo-pa the Oil Age, but that surplus energy ( Energy--From Surplus to Scarcity? ) allowed them to live their ideals without being killed since the state protected them. I guess that is what I hate most about the Hippies ( although I’m not saying they don’t have some good ideas )- their total lack of realism when it comes to survival. Warfare is a natural part of man, it allows his survival. And living as a pacifist is denying you need to fight to survive. We can afford it now, with such an energy surplus, but it ain’t the natural order of the universe. Gandhi only could have lived in the Oil Age. Any other time he would have been killed before he made a name for himself.

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My e-mail is jimd303@netzero.com
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