Joe,
For the third time I have read your web site compliments of www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net. It’s now bookmarked as one of my favorite stops on the net for when I need a healthy dose of reality. Since reality in the modern era of mass-communication is becoming as rare a commodity as legal-age young girls who put out -- or for that matter as rare as "truth", I consider your insight and wit as one of my secret "fishing spots" on an internet ocean of fraud, deception, propaganda and down-dumbing entertainment options.
You have inspired me however to make an attempt to climb a little higher on the middle-class status shit-pile. I’ll be taking the LSAT (Law School Aptitude Test) in December this year and making a go at getting my law degree starting in the fall of 2007. As a 36-year-old suburban father-to-be in one week, with a house and car note, and a job that sucks but keeps my nuts just above hitting the rocks on the bottom, this is no small endeavor.
Why become an attorney in this economic/political climate you wonder? Metaphorically speaking, it is simply to get a bigger plate for another run at America’s buffet table of unsustainable opportunity before the food runs out in the next 20 years.
I am totally convinced that our King and his court of slick-suited liars will do everything in their power regardless of world opinion to keep the illusion of middle-class fantasy rolling in. It won’t last forever, this we both heartily agree on. But I’d say that no matter how fucked the propaganda gets, how dumb the school kids become, how isolated we become as a nation, and how toxic the food-chain gets, that the psychology of previous investment will carry the day until eventual collapse of our economy, the biosphere, and our way if life.
I’m steadily reducing my reliance on society’s systems and making progress. My values are no longer centered around helping society, but rather surviving it when it eventually hits an invisible wall of combined resource scarcity, global warming, Peak Oil, financial collapse, healthcare collapse, immigration overload, community dissolution, academic inferiority etc. etc. etc. By increasing my income as an attorney, (hopefully with the VA paying the tuition since I’m a 40% disabled veteran) I’ll just channel the extra dough into buying what my family and I will need to “get unplugged” and head for the high ground rather than debt-financed matching Lexus SUV’s in the three-car garage.
Although the eventual outcome of suburbia and the faux reality of the American dream are certain, as long as America is collectively willing to burn all its bridges (so to speak) to keep the illusion of prosperity alive, I’m going to try to ride that wave to a more advantageous position.
Your blog, as well as Jim Kunstler and a few others, motivate me to get the show on the road while there’s still a buffet table. I’ll be reading your stuff and recommending it to others who appreciate a little ‘reality’ every day to balance out the euphoria of living in a debt-driven, middle-class commuter’s world.
As you told me before, I’ll hug my babies.
Best wishes to you and yours,
David
Sugarland, Texas
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Dear David,
Reading your letter, I find myself relieved that I do not have young children to look out for. It creates and entirely different scenario for those who wish to get "off the grid."
If you do not mind a suggestion from an old man, let me say this. Start establishing that situation now, not because the world is going to end tomorrow, but because getting simple is complex, and takes a heck of a lot longer than it appears, until you get into it. Secondly, you cannot entirely see how to do it in advance. Planning is good, but only so good.
In 1981 I went to backwoods of Northern Idaho with a brilliant wife who saw the wisdom of "getting off the grid." We had 20 acres and a cabin and eventually, two kids. The marriage soured, but the self-sufficiency thing was working pretty well, as much because of living among so many like-minded folks, survivalists, Indians, other back-to-the-landers, etc. We had gravity fed spring water, hot and cold running water that did not depend upon electricity, horses for some of the heavy work like skidding logs and over the mountain rides, we had some pasture, a wood lot -- and a good used truck for hauling. We put up lots of our own food when we could (although the growing season is crap up there). If we wanted to listen to the radio or watch the small TV we had to use a truck battery. But mostly we played piano and guitar and read books and did horseback picnics, that sort of thing. Excepting for the marriage, which was partly a casualty of the hard work, partly a difference in background cultures, life was good. Hard by most American standards, but very good and healthy too.
The best part if it was the effect on the children. Both are now strong, independent people, at the top of their classes in college (one finishes up this summer with two degrees, the other is still at Cornell after spending time in Mozambique working in an AIDS clinic). We could not have done better for our children if we had 10 million dollars. The off-the-grid conditioning of their early years more than sereved them well. It saved their lives.
So all I am saying is, do not think you must pile up some huge amount of money to even start. Or even that you can buy safety and peace, or buy your way off the grid at all. The grid is more than just an energy and power and communications grid. It is more like a spider web to which all players stick. In this country EVERY involvement with money is a sticky proposition. We literally stick to any situation that provides money or involves money or promises money. Every object we purchase purchases us in return, no matter how simple and obvious. For example, a chainsaw to cut heating wood requires repairs and fuel, files for sharpening, and many new chains over the years. Not to mention a back-up saw because firewood is a mater of life and death in a remote cold place. That sort of thing. the places where one can be self-sufficient are truly limited, because the more proximity to civilization, the less likely one is to be able to be self-sufficient. And if one gets too far away from it, the labor of self-sufficiency becomes impossible, except for the most dedicated hermit. It's a delicate balancing act. Places and things that look good at first do not look so good later.
Anyway, the only way to learn is to begin d it, in whatever small way one can, and build on that. At best, in the end it proves to be a set of trade-offs and compromises which, ide, one is happy with and which over the long term do what's best for all the family members involved.
Congrats on taking the LSAT. My son, the one raised during his early years in the cabin, took his last summer. and got an outstanding score. He studies the philosophy of law at the university during the winter, and is an EMT crew lea in his off hours. During the summer he is a smoke jumper in a helicopter crew out of Krassel, Idaho. He can deliver a baby and can and does occasionally knock down a mule deer in the rugged mountains for his freezer when he chooses to, so he can sti in his small student apartment and cook gourmet wild game and read Kant and Rousseau and Cormac McCarthy.
Yeah, I am bragging on my kids again. But the truth is that only character shaping effect of those early years in the cabin could have prod such a man in today's society.
Based upon my own experience, I would say, do not wait until everything is in place and there seems to be enough money that you can make your move. There's never enough money inside the system. Even if you are a lawyer.
In brotherhood,
Joe
