My father is 85, born as a menonite farmer during the depression, was going to be a preacher until he went to World War II were he met my irreverent Italian mother whom he married and brought back to the US. He dropped religion and became an athiest even though in all other ways culturally he remained quite conservative and true to his prudish upbringing. He ended working for Westinghous in their atomic energy division until that closed down. He was a lifelong democrat until Reagan, become a republican through George Bush's first term. He voted for Obama.

So I asked the old man yesterday how he viewed the current economic crisis and what he saw happening going forward.

He said the economic recovery will not happen quickly this time around since there is no more bubbles to inflate since the last two, the banking and consumer were fake, unlike the manufacturing and information technology booms which were based on something concrete. He said the era of governments backing corporations and the banks is over and that the government will turn to a more socialist agenda to focus on the needs of the middle class. He said this is necessary since now it has become clear that corporations and banks are only out for their own profit. He said it is time for the government to look out for the little guy. He is a great fan of Obama by the way.

Around mitigations for issues like peak oil and global warming my Dad said the human being is not capable of changing his appetite for growth and expansion and all attempts will be futile. He said this will be taken care of by mother nature sometime in the next 200 years. I told him it will happen in my life time and certainly in the lifetime of my daughters. He is skeptical of any radical changes to the status quo in either direction, up or down.

Just interesting getting an old man's view of things which I thought I would share.

Thanks. It is interesting to hear oldsters' thoughts on the current. My grandma (96) is very nervous about all of this.

Lived in the wilderness for two weeks. Read this post.
Yes governments are going to take care of us and care for us.
They are looking out for us and will be our parents.
Daddy and mommy.
Tuck us into sleep.
Discussed this with my bud out there.
These older people have played a big hand in selling us out. There manifest destiny.
Fan of Obama? :-O
He must be a fan of Chicago gangsters.
The wilderness clears the mind and soul.
You come back and realize the severity of the situation.
Read this post it gets even more clear just how insane and fked we just are.
God help us all.
But hey rock on old man.
Thanks for clarity and giving bits of exposure on the severe mental illness driving this death march.
But its comical in its insanity.
There is only one thing humans that are still human can do is LOCK AND LOAD.

There you go. The only thing humans can do is get ready to kill each other.

That's the testosterone talking.

The wisdom of the wilderness.

The wisdom of the wilderness was long ago lost--that's why we're in the predicament we are.

Holmes doesn't need anyone to come to his defense but his comments do remind me ever so much of myself at around 25. Like him I looked toward the wilderness for my spiritual reference and after an immersion of 2 weeks or a month I would gain perhaps what has been in my life the deepest insights and an understanding of what was clearly dysfunctional in the world of man around me. Even at the age of 51 that warrior vision is still there when I go again into the wilderness. But unlike when I was 25 the wilderness can't mean more than a reference. It can never be a sustainable model. I am a man born of suburbia. It took a long time for me to know my place and stop the idealization that I could somehow live my life in the wilderness.

Here is the rub Holmes which I know you know already. I only mention it to lead in to something I want to share. It is the deep connection while in the wilderness where the man/wilderness dichotomy drops away and where after around 7-10 days you reach that base line where you feel yourself moving in natures rhythms. When the barrier has dropped you feel a sense of oneness that to those that have never known or tasted it will never understand what that truly is. You can not experience this with a walk in the park or car camping. But you are only a visitor there. The wilderness embraces you but only ever as a visitor. The wilderness exposes all that is dysfunctional in the world of man but in the end also exposes that indeed this 21st century world of man is the habitat you have been born into and where your path as a warrior will be played out. The wilderness is there to motivate, guide, provide a reference and give you spiritual strength.

Once that realization sinks in you mature. You move on from this romantic warrior image of the wilderness being right and the world of man being wrong.

Take that strength and knowledge you learn from the wilderness and move now into the world of man and make your mark.

It is always there where ever you go.

One time in South Florida years ago I was at an intersection of concrete on a wide boulevard waiting to make a left hand turn. 95% concrete with only the thinnest medium strip of native vegetation. I looked and gazed upon a cattle egret who was frozen in deep concentration. He plunged his bill into the grass and pulled out a Cuban tree frog. He swallowed it. This all happened in 20 seconds. I looked around, Of course none of the people in the nearby cars saw it. I smiled to myself. In that thinnest sliver of native vegetation the resilience of the everglades was present. Patiently one day from these refuges the wilderness will come back. That cattle egret was mocking the Hummer, the Tahoe, the Suburban. .

Humans are pathetic in their perception of their strength. They are living on borrowed time. The wilderness is everywhere around us, waiting patiently. Even in the most disturbed of habitats.. For it is seeing the wilderness in even the most artificial landscapes that the weakness of humans are revealed.

Once you recognize how truly powerful the wilderness is then humans and their pathetic endeavors lose all their ability to disturb you. For you see that humans are not going to win this fight.

Once you see that you can have compassion and all the wrongs of man and civilization that have hurt and wounded you can heal. You can realize that it is the humans who at this moment need to be cared for. They are the underdogs. They are fucked. And will suffer immensely for their hubris.

The deeper you let that knowledge penetrate within the more freely you can move about and be effective in the world of man. You owe it to the wilderness to be effective.

I envy you’re youth Holmes. Take every opportunity you can get to go into the wilderness….there is no greater classroom and teacher. But it is not home. You graduate everytime you walk out of the wilderness into the world of man.

I was with Holmes. We walked among the remnants of a hunter gatherer society that existed for untold generations. Their sign was abundant in the form of tools and petroglyphs, rock shelters and hunting blinds spread over an expansive geographic area. We did not have the expertise to determine what may have been only several hundred years old and what may have been thousands of years old.

What was apparent though is that these people inhabited this land, year after year, decade after decade, through the ages. Whether by their own fault or not...they were "sustainable" in the true sense of the word.

In the blink of an eye these people were displaced and replaced by a cattle culture that has now failed in only a span of a few generations. The land is now mainly bereft of both cattle and Indians.

We also sighted a wolf, in a region where the last known wolf was killed in the 1940s. A sign that industrial man's endeavors in this corner of North America are in retreat and the wilderness is on the march.

It was a fascinating experience to see not only the signs of a vanished native culture...but also to see the relics of your own culture. A culture that has also mostly vanished from this landscape, but in a much shorter time frame. I think it was this contrast that drove home what Holmes describes as the "severity of the situation."

On a side note...of the 3 nearby human settlements. One town that had 2 gas stations now has 1. One town that had 1 gas station now has none...and another town that had 2 gas stations now has 1, plus a station that has only 1 pump working out of 4 (net loss of 2 3/4 gas stations over the past couple years).

The wolf is moving in and the gas stations are moving out.

Ibon has written a powerful essay.

I've never managed to mature beyond the romance of the wilderness. A crumb of wisdom was etched into my understanding many years ago with a quote from the Sierra Club book "On The Loose" by Terry and Renny Russell:

"The weed will win in the end, of course."

Pay no attention, thats just mental illness talking...way to go holmes
Forlorn Hope

Wow. That is a powerful image seeing your own culture as a dying artifact in a landscape rich in ancient geology and archeology.

One day that wolf will raise his hind leg and mark his territory on that rusted old gas pump!

What I found interesting in my Dad's comments was admitting a certain defeat in this exuberant individualist capitalism that he supported for most of his life (Him and I had violent fights over this when I was a young) and now he supports a government that is going to take some small steps in turning towards supporting the downtrodden and disenfranchised. As hopeless and dyfunctional as this nay end up being it is representative of a collective shift of orientation.

I worked in an orphanage in Mexico when I was young in the 70's that was run by a couple who were maoists. They believed in their ideology fervently at a time when much of Latin America was leaning heavily left supported even by the church. Latin America then went totally free market capitalist in the 80's and 90's and has swung back to the left during the past 10 years. The main difference from the leftist movement today compared to 30 years ago is that it is more driven by pragmatic survival than by ideology. Governments from Brazil, Chile to Mexico have needed to focus on the needs of the poor for their political survival and to prevent social chaos.

What is happening in America is not so different. Seen through the eyes of overshoot and peakoil it may be too late and futile. But it may also be laying the groundwork for a pragmatism that will carry forward laying down some foundations toward sustainability.

The ethos of the wilderness in America and the frontier is where we get alot of the meme of individualism in this country. After having lived in many countries I am very grateful for having this meme deeply embedded in my soul. But it is crippling also and has led to all the self entitled individualism and excesses of consumerism Think of my dad voting for Ronald Reagan.

It is really very easy to see everything as broken and dysfunctional. It is also very easy to take this position as it allows you to wash your hands of the collective mess. Then you can look down from some lofty position and not have to engage in any effort to change. But this is a sign of weakness. In fact it is a symptom of the same selfish individualism and isolationism you can see in any suburban neighborhood.

gas stations= culture. no gas stations= no culture. Is there a reason why I don't ask what country they travelled, I wonder?

Yeah, but they generally taste like shit.