Village Blog

It’s becoming more and more apparent that living in a small town might be the best bet for coping with Peak Oil and Steven over at Deconsumption has just written a useful article outlining the criteria by which someone might choose a small town to live in. However, for those of us who already live in a small town that fits the bill there is the next stage to consider.

My town Raglan (score 9.5 out of 10 on Steven’s criteria) is indeed well suited. I’ve talked before about  the changes that Raglan needs to make to get ready. Essentially they can be listed as; Ensure a wide spread of permaculture knowledge, start seedbanking, start a farmer’s market, get a few people exploring alternative fuels, start a green dollar system and take the banking system out of the picture by extracting locally owned investment money from the corporate system and investing it in local people. Continue the great recycling scheme we already have.

What’s great about this stuff is that even without peak oil we’d be better off making these changes. What’s also great is that many of these changes/initiatives can be made without having to waste energy on getting the local council on board.

Having said that though there is a small town in Ireland that is preparing for peak oil and they do have the local council on board. My hat’s well-off to Rob Hopkins and the students of Kinsale Further Education College for their Energy Decent Action Plan and especially for the community consultation process that they used and especially-especially for being able to communicate their ideas to the council.

The section on food is particularly good with ideas like planting food forests on every available patch of public land (another thing that would make a town a better place right now) and encouraging slow-food and organic agriculture - with a detailed strategy.

I do have some criticisms but as the report was successful at swaying their local council the following comments must be read with the understanding that they are the sort of ideas that might put a council off and even though its important to consider them I myself would take them out if I was having to deal with an organisation like that.

The best example of what I am talking about is in their youth section. I’m not happy with some of their plans to ‘engage’ youth in the changes that need to be made – especially the ‘young mayor’ idea. This is exactly the sort of fakery that is a contributing factor in the troubled lives of young people in our culture. Teenagers are dying for something real to do and here we are with an emergency on our hands and we’re giving them more pretend stuff. I would rather see their energy put in to something that matters.

Most of the ideas are very directive which is typical of civilised thinking. I’m not sure how quickly teenagers raised in civilisation can get out of old habits (probably quite quickly if they are taken seriously) but I’d prefer to see them given a lot more leeway to come up with creative solutions to peak oil problems. Then rather than adults expending energy to keep them busy the teenagers (who have the most spare time and energy anyway) could be a net contributor to the problem solving. I’m not sure how this would work in practice but I know that we need to change our approach to this age group if we want to have a successful community.

As for Education – I’d love to see the schools closed down, the kids put through a permaculture course and the school grounds planted with a food forest. I don’t expect many people would agree with that but at the very least the teaching of permaculture could become a focus of the curriculum and rather than leaving it to the transition year like the Action Plan suggests I’d start teaching it at kindergarten age - judging by my 3 year old’s enthusiasm for the garden this would be very successful (do we need reminding that ‘garten’ is German for garden?). This way the children could plant their school grounds into a food forest themselves. Once they’d done that each class could also become responsible for getting a food forest planted on a patch of public land near the school.  This would be a wonderful way of getting permaculture knowledge into all the homes in the town too, the kids could teach their parents! – how’s that for a revolution?

I don’t know what to do with their Housing section. I think what they suggest is good but the building industry is so closely tied to the economic growth engine that I think this area is going to be a really unpredictable one. I also worry that too many of our houses will be impossible to get right for a low/no energy future. Even here in the north of New Zealand where we have a benign temperate climate I feel that some houses will become dangerously cold in winter. I shudder to think what will happen in other parts of the world.

I have no major complaints about the rest of the report, I was surprised to see a section on tourism but upon reading it I can see what they are planning makes some sense. What I really should do now is get off my butt and start talking to other like minded people in town about the report and see what we can get happening.

I spent more time than I care to remember during my childhood mowing lawns. Even the brief jubilation of owning a ride-on at 15 quickly faded - probably due to the fact that my Dad got an under powered machine that I then had to use on our over sized property. There's probabaly a whole of lot childhood 'issue' stuff mixed up with mowing for me but I'll just keep on supressing that for the moment.

Bascially it's taken me a long time as an adult to get into lawn mowing - I still can only bring myself to mow once a month and even then that's only because the kids are in danger of getting bee stings from the clover that took over from the proper lawn that I seeded.

There is one thing that I like about mowing though and that's mowing gorse. For those of you unfamiliar with New Zealand, gorse is one of those introduced species that really likes the climate and is attempting a take-over of the entire country. It's a nasty prickly plant and needless to say I had a bad experience with it as a child and ever since I can't stand the stuff. I think the feeling is mutual. Anyway there's nothing more satisfying than mowing down young gorse plants. Mature ones are a bit too big for the domestic mower. As a kind of joke I sent a short video of myself mowing chest high gorse to a friend in the UK. My friend called it Extreme Mowing.

Here's where I get to the point: A few days after the extreme mowing incident it began to dawn on me that there was something about mowing that seemed to be representative of mainstream New Zealand culture as a whole. The repressive domination of things natural. The extreme control for the sake of control that made our country what it is today. The sheer pointless waste of energy.

Only now I discover that lawns and the mowing there-of is just one more piece of cultural imperialism from the USA. Via the Anthropik Network I discovered this brilliant article; 'Why Mow' by Michael Pollan, which explains everything.

BTW I wonder if it's significant that my current mower was a gift from my father?

Our 1 year old chose today to reveal that her spoken vocabulary is actually about 3 times as large as we had thought, all of a sudden she started trying out new words. She also decided to start experimenting with walking with her eyes closed! These are the things that I love about being a parent. Kids from the age of about 1 through to 3 years old are absolutely riveting - and hilarious too. You'll often find a room full of adults goes totally quiet while all eyes focus on the toddler as they do, well, as the do nothing in particular.

I've noticed that everywhere I go on the net lately people are saying how they wish they could find people in their area who were into the same things. Be it parents practicing alternative methods of parenting or the crowd at Anthropik looking to form tribes the theme is the same. We're certainly feeling the same thing here in Raglan. There is one other couple here who parent like us and they're moving away for a few months. We'll cope but it won't be the same.

Incidentally, where I have been today is checking out some of the blogs by young mothers. I always find myself drawn to mothers of young children, as a group they impress me more than any other in my culture. I've been through a fairly intense few years the last 5 years and I've had to change to survive. I don't want to get into the details but one of the results is that I seem to be much more interested in talking to women than men, who, apart from a few exceptions, seem to mostly talk about kind of boring inconsequential stuff. I wonder if this is how women generally see men?

The latest topic of discussion at our place has been about home schooling. We've read some of John Taylor Gatto's articles and we've poured over The Teenage Liberation Handbook, now we just need to figure out how we are going to do it here. One of our biggest problems is trying to enourage other people around us to homeschool as well so that there are friends around for our kids to play with. My big fear is that our kids will want to go to school just to be with their mates. I'm sure that's what I would have been like in the same situation. We're also worried that it will be hard work - based on the fact that it is hard work right now with a 3 yo and a 1 yo. This is not necessarily very logical. The problem is we don't know people in our area who home school yet (there we go again). So we've decide we'll order one of John Holt's books from Amazon, sign up with Growing Without Schooling magazine and then put an add in the local paper in order to hook up with a few hopefully like-minded people. Once again I figure this would be less of a problem if we were in a village. And yes, I'm starting to sound like a stuck record with that comment 'n all.

Damn, I've just discovered that GWS magazine stopped back in 2001. I wonder if there are any websites or blogs that are doing a similar job these days?

We had our GE hearing yesterday. I haven’t yet heard which way the council went but I’m not overly hopeful. Although I was surprised at just how well our presentation came together we had one more or less tedious presenter who irritated the councillors and despite our belief that the facts should decide the outcome this slip may have been enough for them to decide they didn’t like us. They mayor revealed himself to be boorish and arrogant by telling the presenter to hurry up since he was ‘bored as hell’ - I felt like leaping up and giving him a good slap. I’m sure that’s not how his mother raised him to behave.

Just before the hearing I received a posting from Joy with some good advice on how to deal with a council composed mostly of retired farmers.

…appeal to farmers' repressed frustration with the current system; appeal to their memory of life before it; appeal to modern examples of success - small sustainable farms that are turning a profit and rebuilding their communities.

I didn’t have time to rewrite my presentation so I just tried to carry the attitude with me while I spoke but I was delighted when the speaker after me, an organic farmer, spoke about exactly this issue. His was a great presentation. He emphasised how with organic farming the farms are able to support a larger number of families and help to bring people back into the rural areas.

He was rewarded with a question from the oldest of the retired farmers about weed management under an organic regime. Our farmer gave us a better answer to this question after the hearing than he gave at the time. Apparently a lot of the weeds are dealt with by reclassification. That is, organic farmers view many weeds as beneficial to care of the land and care of the animals.

It sounds good, although I’m also aware from the US how there is a huge growth in Industrial scale organic farms but I have hope that down here we’ll be a little more immune to it.

Oh yes, I've just remembered, there were two unknown gentlemen sitting in the back of the hearing who I mistakenly though were supporters but actually turned out to be lawyers who work for the big agricultural research institute (Agresearch) that operates in our area. Since Agresearch's opposition to our position consisted of a brief letter to the hearing I presume they didn't take us very seriously and that their lawyers probably got a bit of a fright at how thorough we were. Either that or they already have the whole thing sewn up via back room deals.

I didn’t intend for this blog to be a catalogue of nuclear family strife but unfortunately that’s where my life is at right now - it’s bugging me a lot at the moment because the realisation is hitting home that despite doing a whole lot of things right in the way of attachment parenting it’s pretty clear from our kids that they’re still suffering from being raised in civilisation.

Unfortunately (but also fortunately) it is true that a lot of nuclear family strife would evaporate if we lived in a village. I’m sure not all of it will since we bring civilisation with us where ever we go but let’s dwell on the possibilities for the moment.

One of our current problems is that our oldest (at 3 and a half) is going stir crazy being stuck at home. We were out last night visiting friends who’ve got kids as well and the place was a mad house. In the midst of this was our daughter being incredibly calm and independent, totally different to when we are at home where the atmosphere is very calm and quiet and she feels compelled to create a mad house to bring the stimulation levels up to meet her developmental needs (at least that’s my theory).

She generally wants an adult nearby at all times. It’s fine if I am working outside, both the kids come out and muck around somewhere within sight of me but if I am spending the day on the computer – look out! Either I get constantly interrupted or Karen gets very little done.

The continuum concept discussion list has been discussing just this issue. One writer reminded us that in a stone-age village, small children would be able to wander around finding new and stimulating things to do without needing to drag an adult with them because there would be a variety of adults doing a variety of activities in a variety of places. Our daughter needs to be self directed at the moment but still wants an adult nearby so her solution is to try to get one of us to come with her. We of course resist and either go about our own work or try to direct her into another task.

Directing her into another task produces the best immediate result and for a while peace reigns throughout the house. Unfortunately we are once again reverting to civilised parenting techniques whereby we rob our kids of the ability to think for themselves and to learn about themselves. What our daughter is doing when she is bored is entering a ‘search pattern’ of behaviour. She is trying to find her own way and then we come along and treat her like she can’t figure out things for herself and give her an officially sanctioned activity to do. The central message of this approach is that she couldn’t possibly know what is right and therefore needs someone in authority to direct her.

This message is one of the most insidious that a child receives and one that John Taylor Gatto emphasises in his writings. Next time you’re at an adventure playground where under-fives are playing – go and observe the parents, in my experience they will almost all be telling their kids where to climb next rather than letting them explore. The constant dishing out of instructions seems to be almost instinctual amongst modern parents.

Now, at last, to the positive side of the post. The village vision/fantasy I have is that there will be the options necessary for self directed play. Children can play where ever they like; little kids can play in the central areas which most of the buildings look out to, the older ones can go explore the forest up the back of the village land (or the older ones can take the younger ones to explore the forest). Alternatively they can go hang out with adults doing work in the gardens and learn how to do permaculture, or they can stay inside and help an adult with whatever is going on there. They could go hang out with the elders and listen to stories or perhaps they will have arranged for one of the adults to teach them something that day and there will be a group doing that.

We are determined that we want nothing to do with organised schooling but worry that home-schooling could be as stressful as having little ones at home. Even if we make it work, it’s entirely likely that they’ll end up wanting to go to school anyway since that’s where many of their friends will be. But not if we live in a village. A village should be a safe environment and I really like the idea of just letting the kids run wild. Anything else would involve a degree of coercion and coercion is always so exhausting – for both parties concerned. I’m also very confident that children left to their own devices will learn most everything they need to know.

In the meantime, while we're not in a village we have to work on building a community around us anyway, one where there are similar options for our kids - we'll just have to connect up those options with out cars.

On my radio show today and for reasons that I can’t adequately explain (but have to do with how terribly serious it’s been getting lately) I played only pop music from the 80s between my talks and interviews.

This lead me to be probably the only person to have ever played Wham’s Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go in the middle of a bring-down-civilisation talk by Derrick Jensen. It caused one listener to ring up to see if there was a computer malfunction and also to some questioning about my choice in music from my wife when I got home.

At the end of the talk I played ‘Message in a Bottle’ by The Police and the sparse lonely sense in that song seem to fit much better with Derrick’s rather sober message. I tell you, 80’s pop music has a lot of uses.

‘It made me laugh, it made me cry’ is a hell of a cliché but I’m willing to use it just this once to describe my reaction to Ran’s new essay (mostly because there is some truth to it). As I mentioned earlier I’ve been getting a bit sick of how serious everything has been for me lately, I mean just read this blog and you’ll see what I mean (my radio show is just as bad :-). Ran has an ability to not get bogged down with worries and it seems to leave him with access to a good reservoir of hope. It also gives him a very broad view of whatever issue he is dealing with – possibly the broadest view of anyone I have read. A sense of perspective and a sense of hope was just what I needed today – I’ve been in a better mood since I read Fall down Six Times. Hmm, Ran’s essays are mood enhancing.

This broad and creative perspective he has makes his ideas so good and so original that I feel like giving up my comparatively feeble attempts at a blog. Ironically I have a better imagination that most people I know but this new essay leaves me feeling like a creative desert (the dry sandy thing, not the sweet yummy thing that makes you sick. There is nothing more I can say that would add to what he has already written so people should just go read it .

I’ve been a bit preoccupied with things lately so posting has been a bit light. The family has been sick and I am trying to prepare for a submission to our local council about GE. Our group of ‘long haired freaks and other trouble makers’ is presenting to council next week. The council is dominated by conservative retired farmers so I assume I am going to find it a frustrating experience.

Whilst other’s in our group are preparing masterful technical arguments I am focusing almost solely on the more superficial aspects of the presentation. I got a haircut earlier this week and I’ve asked my father to supply me with a suitably conservative tie. In my brief talk I am to present myself as a businessman (it’s the truth, just not the whole truth) and will talk about sensible things like the economy and how the release of GMOs will damage our export markets and cause destitute farmers to band together and sue organisations like the district council.

I have no doubt that the councillors would like to marginalise our views (in their own minds) by writing us off as mis-guided radicals. If they can do this no amount of sensible argument will sway them so I intend to cast myself as one of their ‘type’ and pull that particular rug out from under their feet.

Incidentally this is the one area where I beg to differ with Ran. The science of genetic engineering is currently operating at a level of such incompetence that there is no hope of his vision coming to pass – at least not for our generation. The best they can currently do are malfunctioning plants that are probably behind the recent doubling of food allergies and possibly also contribute to cancer as well.

We treat our children badly in civilisation, bad enough to need a strong system of beliefs about child ‘rearing’ to keep the denial in operation.

People think kids are born bad because they have to spend so much time ‘training’ them not to indulge in bad behaviour but it’s my belief that most of this stuff is actually learned from their parents. People in our society have the (often) sub conscious view that children are of little consequence (which should be no surprise in a hierarchical society). Generally speaking we treat them with a great deal of disrespect. Then we turn around and punish them for copying our attitude when they’re cruel to someone else.

Children are always on the look out for clues about how they should be, it’s why my little girl mimics the things I do - often with hilarious outcomes. Probably what we are most in denial about is that we are the most significant role-models our children will ever have.

I discovered to my horror that my little girl learned to snatch from me and now I can’t figure out how to stop her snatching things off our 1 year old – at least not without applying coercion that is.

Ever hear children being unbelievably bossy to their younger siblings? – no prizes for guessing where they learnt that from either. It’s straight out mimicry, from the word’s used through to the tone and the body language. My daughter even tries to imitate the depth of my voice when she wants to tell someone off. You’ll also find that this learning will still be with you when you become parents, all sorts of surprising things will come out in stressful situations!

Looking back I can see how the early years of my adult life have been spent unlearning behaviours learnt as a child. I have had to learn to be more patient, to take account of other people’s feelings, to control my anger, to control my jealousy, to give people time to figure stuff out for themselves and generally to learn to be gentle. Most of these misbehaviours were modelled to me by the adults in my life. This is not to indict my parents though – children of civilisation themselves they at least were able to model things like active compassion to me which is more than a lot of people got. What’s important to remember is that there are cultures in the world where the children aren't saddled with this additional burden when growing up.

Interestingly, to this day I cannot tell a decent joke. I always tell it way too fast, desperate to get it out before my listener leaves the room. On the other hand I’m good at rapid-fire wise cracks where speed is a major component of the humour. Unbelievably it was my wife who pointed out to me, just a few months ago, that my father often leaves the room while people are talking to him – completely focused, as he is, on the next ‘important’ thing in his life.

Even worse is the rationalisation we have for the discipline side of child rearing. First of all though, I should say that I don’t think children need ‘rearing’ and also that discipline is something that can only be modelled not ‘instilled’. More importantly, I think these concepts are an excuse to mistreat children. It’s universal throughout our culture but I’ll use conservative Christians as an example since their language is much more explicit. (I loved writing that sentence!). To address the big picture and place blame where it belongs, a child left to direct their own childhood will not be much use to civilisation – they’ll be happy, well balanced and compassionate and civilisation can’t use people like that. By implication we obviously believe that raising a happy child is only a secondary goal of child rearing.

Children are born in sin say conservative Christians and then point to a misbehaving child as evidence. Unfortunately I think this is a misreading. Born in sin doesn’t mean born sinful – it means born into sin – or more specifically not ‘born in blessing’ (the blessing of Eden). If anything it means we are the sinful ones not the child. Only a moron would say a new born is inherently sinful. Children are open to temptation in a way that adults are not – for sure – but outside of temptation all of their naughty behaviour can be attributed to us, their parents.

Before we had children I went with my wife to a parenting evening at a church where we were introduced to the concept of the ‘V of love’. Essentially this concept was about the fact that we have total control over our baby when it is born and we gradually reduce our level of control until they are adults and they leave home. Even more essentially though, this theory was a rationale to control and coerce children. It should, more accurately, have been called the ‘V of control’. I don’t want to come down too hard on this because I use these techniques in moments of (daily) desperation but the guy giving the advice justified it by saying that kids are sinful – after all he said, he was witness to all manner of sinful behaviours that his little boy did on a daily basis.

I'm sure he was telling the truth. Christians are the least radical group in our society and I have no doubt that he treated his child the way most people in western civilisation do – which is to say he used detachment parenting. (That’s not actually a term, but it comes from ‘attachment parenting’ which grew out of a response to conventional child treatment). A newborn baby is left to cry itself to sleep every night of the first weeks of it’s life, left to cry until it’s heart is broken and it gives up. A new born baby receives a traumatic birth in hospital. A new born baby is left to ‘cry it out’ so that it learns that it can’t control the parents. That’s detachment parenting. Attachment parenting is the opposite, it’s co-sleeping with the baby and responding to it’s cries – maybe even responding before it cries.

Having decided to co-sleep with our baby before it was born it seemed the most natural thing to do and now I can’t understand how people could treat their precious little baby any differently. Once you choose this path you move away from hardening your heart to the needs of your children and you move away from mainstream thoughts on these matters. How anyone thinks a new born baby has the intellectual development to want to control it’s parents is totally beyond me these days but it’s a common assumption. It’s simple damn it – if the baby cries it means it needs your help. In other cultures babies are hardly ever heard crying. In our culture, if the baby isn’t crying it mean’s it’s learned to walk and has left the building.

The sinful behaviour that people witness in their toddlers is the acting-out of injustice, it might be the injustice of being separated from the mother, or the multitude of unjust rules we apply to them. Typically we try to prevent the child from expressing these feelings, thereby creating further injustice as well as storing up these feelings for a time it’s safe to let them our. A safe place might include with some kind of pychotherapist but will more likely be when we have acquired a position of power and have subordinates to boss around.

Our list of subordinates can and usually does include children.

We know that to ignore the needs of another adult is an unkind thing to do but we seem to be of the opinion that children are unaffected by having their feelings ignored. The reality is that, lacking maturity and life experience, they are less able to deal with personal injustice than we are. It’s a triumph of denial that we can’t see this crucial fact.

Pity the children - and pity the world that they inherit.

Lastly and most importantly, I don’t want this to be an attack on parents who haven’t managed to develop a gentler style of parenting. The truth is I fail miserably in this area - and I had the advantage of trying to develop a few idea about how we would parent before our first child was born. It’s even harder to make changes mid-stream.

A child is meant to be raised by a village. Two parents alone can not do the job. I also don’t want childless people to come away from this being judgemental (as I used to be). The next time you see a parent being unfair to a child, remember it’s happening because the parent’s are struggling. They need our help, not our judgement.

Sick of hearing me (only a father) talk about parenting like I'm really working hard? Well, here's the real thing from a blog I just found called Mother Anarchy.

"I'm the least mainstream mother I know" says the author

Good! I'm putting Mother Anarchy in my links.

incidentally from Mother Anarchy I also found this interview about another individual who has spent time living in the wild.

Ran’s putting up some great stuff at the moment. I have yet to follow the ‘thinking mind cannot feel’ link but it makes a lot of sense. I’d go one step further with that idea and say that most of us move on to using thinking as an excuse not to feel – as an excuse not to confront the emotional demons lurking beneath the surface – the longer we do it the greater the build up of suppressed emotion and the greater therefore the need to keep thinking and to keep busy. I know Ran has said in the past that most people’s goal in life is to get to their death without ever having to change themselves (something along those lines anyway) and I think that ties in there somehow.

He seems to be getting some flack for this. People are sniping around the edges of what he is saying – unable to actually argue with the main thrust of his argument they pick away at the edges hoping that will get rid of it – a sure sign that he is onto something. In our society people with thinking jobs are rewarded more than people with physical jobs, there is a myth that the intellectual is somehow superior and we've probably run up against this belief. All I can say is; if our society values it then almost by defintion it must be a dangerous thing.

Personally I think it makes perfect sense. This is The Fall we’re talking about. We ate from the tree of knowledge and have been banished from Eden and the more knowledge we have the less Eden-like our world gets. Just look out your window if you don't believe me. Actually; just look at your window. You can see the world outside but you're safe from actually having to relate to it thanks to that window, and thanks to the amazing amount of knowledge that went into making it.

Another link he has is entitled Toddlers eager to assist clumsy scientist. Why is it that people are surprised when children are kind? Our culture really does believe that children are born sinful (i'll behaving more to say about that at a later date) but really the misbehaviour we see when they reach they age of 2 years is either a response to our coerceive parenting trechniques or the acting out of trauma from infancy, be it trauma from being carried inside a messed up civilised person for their first 9 months, or trauma from modern birthing techniques, or from being seperated from their parents each night, or from not being able to have skin to skin contact with their mother because they were bottle-fed, or ... I could go on - and on - but you get the picture.

There’s an interesting posting on Deconsumption at the moment talking about how the coming crash is going to quickly divide us into either a group that can cope with the changes ahead or a group (much larger of course) that can’t.

Once again Steven mentions Ecovillages as a solution to post-peak living. Despite the fact that this blog was set up to record the potential creation of an ecovillage I’m not sure that I totally agree with him. I’m don’t want to rebut his argument though, so much as build on or add to the thinking that prompted idea that ecovillage living is a solution.

In a recent post I said that I thought Ecovillages were a great way to escape civilisation but not a great way to escape the crash of civilisation. I do think they are a great way of building a tight knit community, of building a tribe that will stick with you through thick and thin. There is no doubt that being part of a community will help us survive a lot of difficult stuff but the point is you’ll need to have a really tight-knit group by the time you have to do something like say leave the village and disappear into the forest (should it come to that) – and that will take time to acheive.

If a village is set up in a hurry as a post-peak survival technique it will fail, no doubt about it. Being united by desperation will only work for so long and pretty soon the profoundly different views that such a group are bound to have will start to tear it in different directions.

Also, someone moving to an ecovillage purely for survival purposes will also find after a time that they don’t really fit in. Actually I wouldn’t want to move to a village that would let in someone move in so easily anyway - It’s not for nothing that the successful villages have 3 month trial periods with new villagers.

My other concern about villages as a solution is that unless you are extremely isolated people are going to come knocking on your door for help and if you don’t give it they will likely make your life difficult. I mean, how many extra people can a village cope with? I don’t want to see friends and family suffering so does that mean I invite my relatives and friends to come and stay? What if everyone in the village does that?

What if we don’t do that?

I’m not sure that things are going to get that bad here in New Zealand but the US is a whole ‘nother ball-game, if you’ve got food and a roving band of hungry people want it, how are you going to stop them? The only cure for this kind of malady is prevention.

I figure the best prevention is to make sure your entire district is ready for the crash. This is something I’d like to see happen for the are I live in. It means having lot’s of food (and heritage seeds)ready to go, not just for the locals but for all the people who come to your area for help. It means having lots of permaculture knowledge in the community so that there are plenty of teachers for the many new students that we’ll soon have.

It also means having systems in place to make the crash as gentle as possible for the local community. First up is the necessity of planting permaculture food forests in all the public parks to cater for those who haven’t managed to make ends meet. It means having a green dollar system in place so that people can still trade locally when the bottom falls out of the economy and the national dollar becomes worthless. It also means having something like the Solari system proposed by Catherine Austin Fitts whereby existing wealth (in the form of life savings etc) is removed from the hands of the corporate sector and reinvested locally.

Eventually there will be no economy but these ideas are essential for softening the crash locally and maintaining security - especially food security - in your area. In the event of catastrophe a healthy district will fend off attack much better than a village. One additional point about that too. It’s entirely likely that the authorities will turn out to be one of our biggest threats. The best antidote to this that I can think of is to have a good relationship with your local non-white community because they’ve been well aware of the need to distrust those in authority for generations now and I imagine they’ll be much more useful to have around than a bunch of fearful whiteys who’ve been trained to snap to attention when authority comes calling.

Lastly on the topic of security I have some concerns about the peak oil movement. This is kind of counter intuitive but the peak oil movement and it’s survivalist tendencies worry me. These are the guys who are most likely to have their bunker and lifetime supply of ammo ready when the crash comes. It could be that the peak oilers turn out to be a major liability in a post peak world – intent as they may be on carving out some kind of Mad Max fiefdom for themselves. They lack a decent analysis of civilisation and are preparing for ‘total anarchy’. I know nearly everybody has a poor analysis of civilisation but most people caught short in a crash scenario will act on instinct and are quite likely to form into impromptu communities as happened in New Orleans. It’s the ones who’ve had time to do some forward planning that worry me the most. (I should add that I don't consider Deconsumption and it's readers to be in that category)

Essentially what I’m saying is that whilst ecovillage living is a much more sustainable way of life and one that does provide a useful model for post civilisation living and does encourage the learning of skills that we are going to need, there are other concerns that we will soon be facing and they come under the heading of security. It’s a rather militaristic term but as we have learnt from our horrific history of military excursions, true security comes from looking after everybody– not just from looking after number one and putting a big fence between yourself and the raving hordes outside.