Your guests represent the very best aspects of human potential and I admire their hearts, minds and intentions. Their collective optimism and "can do" spirit is the last hope for the future of humanity, yet much of the "civilized" world seem oblivious to them and their approach. And THAT scares the bejeezus out of me.
@TreeFrog: A shout out -- I've seen you around for awhile now, and you usually have something worthwhile to say. I've been feeling the same way, and it was while listening to this conversation today that it finally settled on me that this is just the way it is. Pella is very wise in setting her course by the direction that people can accept. If people will not hear us, then if we are to continue speaking we must learn to say what we mean in the language and ways they are able to hear. It's that or simply accept and withdraw. Some will never be willing to hear, and in the long run they will be less likely to survive, much less thrive. For people who care about larger things than just their own survival and comfort, the feeling of moving forward constructively in some way -- whether that is a different course of action or withdrawal, or a combination of both -- is essential to our own sense of well being. Pella is following the course that imparts to water it's greatest strength -- finding and following the path of least resistance.
Great interview. The unarticulated question many have is, how could I possibly live a happy, healthy, comfortable life if I'm a poor subsistence farmer? Is that even possible? I've been exploring how to live a healthy, happy satisfying, comfortable life while radically consuming less industrial made goods. I've been living an off grid life on a lot shoestring budget. I now am living a very comfortable, safe, healthy, and happy life while only earning $5,000 per year. I don't even need that much because I've learned how to live much more self sufficiently. In fact, I have more free time than I ever had when I had a full time job. Now I just do some carpentry during the Summer to earn what I need. The time I spend earning money works out to about 10 hours a month. I do work almost every day, on my homestead but there are no deadlines, (except during harvest time ). There are no bosses breathing down my neck. There is no rent or mortgage or car payment to worry about. This is because I built a 400 sf house using a lot of reclaimed building materials. It only cost about $10,000. Because it's small and well insulated I only use about a cord of wood to heat it. That's pretty good for Vermont. My ecological footprint is one fifth what it was, and so are my expenses. Funny how that worked out. The good news is, there are ways to live very comfortably with much lower consumption and cost. If you know how, life in a post collapse world does not have to be worse than your current life.
Mother and grandmother told me that in the war years, everyone here had a backyard garden, a Victory Garden. Everyone canned everything. Dry ice was used as refrigeration, and winter ice from the rivers and lakes was cut for ice houses used for meat packing. Grain from local fields was made to make local Wingold Flour, and everyone fished, hunted and kept small fowl like quail and chickens for eggs. These mini farms were on 25 ft X 125 ft plots of land that contained a small home. There was a hog line, where people could keep hogs in their yards too. More well off had 50 foot wide lots. The whole town was built on self-sustained mini farms. I think this could be done again.
Last World War is only one lifetime away, but in terms of lifestyle, it's a couple centuries. Reckon, folks that were adults by the time Berlin fell, were closer in basic capacities and resilience, to medieval farmers, then to us modern consumers with our daily showering, supermarkets full of 40 choices of food and drink, internet for all we would like to know and not, 2 or 3 cars, central heating and airco, and electronic tooth brushers of course. Kids .. err .. most younger than 40, don't even realize, if you didn't have the money to buy a ticket, you'd just _walk_ to the city, even if it was some 10, 15 miles. It was no unusual thing to do, before the war - and the closest town, would be like a city to most in the country. And they would know how to get things done without electric tools or factory products. People _knew_
@PrizesUSA I think in rural areas this is doable. Urban would be very tricky. Read Laura Ingalls Wilder books to your kids. Especially, The Long Winter. Have blackout nights. Have dinner by candle light. Teach them to do without. If I remember correctly, you can make a button lamp with cloth and pork grease? I believe that is in The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder?
@@reuireuiop0I was reading a book on the aftermath of WWII. Parents of German babies/toddlers during and after the war were not able to be taught basic hygiene. Running water and toilets are a luxury, and not something too available during and after conflict. Many children didnt know how to use basic conveneinces. You know how you potty train kids at certain ages? It wasn't possible. No toilets.
William Rees, an old Canadian "farm boy" has the most unintentionally eloquent and relevant observations about modern humanity that I have ever heard. If you haven't already done so, I would encourage everyone to hear what he has to say.
All the guests were excellent, but Pellas opening remarks particularly resonated with me. Community oreinted "prepping" as opposed to usual type of prepping.
In my opinion, community oriented prepping is where we are headed. Simply because a single individual can not do everything, and it is necessary to diversify tasks and KnowledgeBase for survival. I believe we are heading towards a tribal community mindset.
@@jasonfougere3274 I think you are right. Circumstances will finally (!) force community to happen, better sooner than later to minimize situational forcing. In my own inept attempts at prepping I have become keenly aware of the need for the group in all aspects of planning and building a new world. There are those, including many of my close relatives, that fear tribalism, that somehow this could lead to division and petty wars between factions. How do we persuade people to see beyond these fears?
@danielvonbose557 I guess there is really no way to persuade people to do what they fear, other than providing a safe space for them to see community working beneficially together. There's no way to be certain tribes wouldn't war. It's really the only certainty we have, especially in dramatic and stressful situations. However, the other option would be what?
After every episode, I think, "This is the best one yet." The ideas in this roundtable are the lessons we need to learn pre Simplification in order to thrive post Simplification. The more people who adopt them, the less trauma in the transition. I have added all their books and websites to my extensive, ever expanding reading list. And most of my reading list comes from your guests.
Well, that was a fascinating discussion, thanks Nate. I'm a Brit who has moved to rural France to run a smallholding. In addition to all of the land-based tasks (soil improvement, animal husbandry, fruit tree planting etc) I am attempting to integrate into the close knit local community, most of whom are involved in agricultural work. It is telling just how aware the local farmers are of the deepening crisis. There is evidently something about working closely with the land and nature that means they need no persuading of the nature and depth of our predicament. It is quite amazing just how resilient this community is. Whilst agricultural workers in rural France are poor, they are also incredibly resourceful. Most people grow their own food and I'm certainly not the only keeper of poultry in the community. The competitive chorus of cockerels each morning echoes throughout the village. They have learned to live with very little here, and there is a great deal of skill, and resource sharing. The French 'mairie' system of hyper-local governance will no doubt be a VERY useful aspect of the French system of governance in the post-collapse future. Our village of 167 people has a mayor and a town hall. This is not unusual - all such villages in France have a mairie. Their powers are meaningful and they have a role in local planning, community cohesion, budget / resource allocation and law and order. The necessary shift towards hyper-local economies and governance will not be as strenuous a task in France as it might in other countries because the mairie infrastructure is already established. Pella Thiel's reference to The Triangle of Sadness particularly resonated with me in that I can see a similar shift in power taking place following The Great Simplification in France. Communities like this, with their agricultural skills, resilience, access to land and community cohesion will be the 'nouveau riche' whilst their city-dwelling counterparts will undoubtedly struggle with the new paradigm in which they find themselves. Love your work, Nate! Watch every video. Keep 'em coming!
Thank you for bringing up us city folk. Cities are where so many humans live, and where so much embodied energy exists in the infrastructure, built environment, and culture. We need to recognize the disadvantages and strengths of urban, suburban, and rural living and forge new relationships among them and within them. We can’t all live in small agricultural villages, at least not immediately. I’m trying to figure out how to live in the meantime with minimal harm to the future -and perhaps even facilitating a decent future. Like creating and tending to pollinator gardens while creating community.
6 minutes in and the distinction between "the end of the world" vs "the end of the world as we know it". Is a word for word distinction I've had in mind for a few years now. And this is the first I've heard another person mention it. Fabulous
Loss of community in the global north is one of the worst effects of hydrocarbons giving all of us here a sense of independence from each other. (which we can easily see is breaking with inequity, no affordable housing etc) Our evolution was as part of a group. Thinking back to just the 1960s and 1970s, churches were active, allotments were popular as a place to grow off and chat with like minded people. Small farms growing what you need and in exchange with what neighbours grow builds back community. Like it or not we are moving towards a new future that has opportunity. my 10 acres is slowly becoming productive and very gradually interest from locals is happening. Its still too early though for many who can drive the 10k to a local grocery store then home to world of tv. Clumps of white pine and spruce planted for insects, birds and mammals keeps me busy watching and learning Thanks for the Food and Community in the Ruins chat with your guests
I Believe the current "Monetary System" is Designed that Way for that Very Reason! "Community" or find your "Tribe" is not a trivial effort, nor as simple as you might like to think. At least from my experience with the local indoctrinated inbred hillbillies here in Wyoming. A State that has the second highest per capita miles traveled by year with/on hydrocarbons just to go to work and get food and get back "home"! Yep, Wyoming! Energy Capital of the World? ... at current rates of consumption..., but please listen to the late Al Bartlett's talks on how the Exponential Curve will do you in from a Natural Resource perspective not Wall Street. However, the latter will most certainly follow in quick order. It's sounds/looks like you good you are making an effort. I have given up on my local neighbors. The majority of which that think ""Slow Elk" ~ Edward Abbey" are the answer. As they say here in Wyoming, or perhaps not where you live, "you can can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make the Fuxker Drink! " I'm just now starting to harvest my potato's by hand with the help of a broadfork (best thing since sliced bread including the plow), no, not my girlfriend nor wife, but just my right, left foot armies along with my right and left arm armies and my two wonderful dogs that knew the moles were eating the potato's back in August on which the ones they gnawed on I could live easily tell next spring. The rest, I will save for seed and vodka! (~ 700 #s). That's enough for a Fat Man with two smart dogs! Hang in there my friend, Rome was not Built in a Day, but "we?" all know where this "Fuxker" is headed when you print "money out of thin air" and take the natural world for granted while living on a HydroCarbon Drip! FYI: I've already warned my Christian Fascist Neighbors I'm above Cannibalism nor "Slow Elk" Rustling, likely still a hangable offense here in Wyoming. But I qualified/quantified it for "them" in/at the bar... Don't Worry, I'm going after the fat ones first! Simple Thermodynamics! aka: Energy Return on Investment. Who Cares...? I'm gonna finish digging my potato's, onions, and garlic and do Yoga everyday so I can try and Kiss my Ass Good Bye! I hope that helps with the Ruins! Enjoyed your comment!
It's common for me to watch one of these and say - yes, this is the best, most vitally important episode of your Great Simplification series. This is the latest one. Tremendously important ideas and wisdom from this panel. Doesn't hurt that this is what I'm working on in my own community.
I, too, loved Pella's inverse concept that the Earth is calling us back home. I'm suddenly seeing now in everything she's discussed here, a single unspoken thread that runs through all she's saying and doing. She's following what's been called in Taoism "The Watercourse Way"... following the path of least resistance. It's brilliant Until now so much of our approach to communicating about climate disruption has taken the form of some kind of resistance. Opposition, the resistant force, can work, but only up to a point, and on a limited basis. And it tends to precipitate some form of crisis in order to bring about change. It's been 30 years since climate disruption was made public. It seems clear we're reaching the limit of what good the usual methods of resistance can and will do. It seems like a truism, but in our concern and search for answers it's easy to forget that people can only hear what they are willing to hear. I'm struck by how fitting applying this approach at this point really is. In the Watercourse Way it's said that water draws its greatest power to create change from following the path of least resistance. In doing so its course is never held back, never defeated; it reaches its goal through adapting to the circumstances it finds.
Thank you, Nate and to all in this discussion today. Many great ideas. As I have never left a comment on your program before, but have I have listened to many on Iian McGilchrist, Michael Levin , Richard Erchart, and others. Being from the Deep South and being brought on a farm, my grandpa on one side of my family was Cherokee Indian and we learned many of those traditions, and my parents grew all kinds of foods in our gardens and shared these foods as a community both black and white. I grew up milking cows and making butter milk and making butter, and that was the sixties. My people had been here even before our state was a state. Trees planted a long time ago, apple, cherries , pears, pecans, and walnuts. Blackberries in the wild. Muscadines, grape, we started with a jenny and bought huge mules, 1800 hundred pounds they weighed from the Amish, plows and old equipment from long ago and the first electric corn grinder to make four. Canning vegetables, erb gardens, flowers planted in between garden rows, to keep weeds out, letting the certain land lay and burn it off for a couple of years, no chemicals. My grandfather taught me to raise bees at the age of 5, no helmets or clothing, we never got stung, they knew our smell. I was the youngest child of 4. My brothers were much older than me and now all have passed. I tried for many years after living in NYC for 12 years and 10 years in Santa Monica, back and forth home. We also bought several tractors , but my papa loved our Jenny, beautiful rows he would lay off. A mule or a jenny is harder work, but it is an art. Being home has been a challenge for me, neighbors are divided by religion and racisim. I tried to get a community as you are speaking of, but because of my enormous enthusiasm for reading since I was a child, I am ostracized for my open-mindedness. Alas, that will not stop me. I feel at home also and I thank you for your wisdom. May we all help one another in this globel crisis we are all in. Also if I may add ,my papa was a well read man and had a library as he taught me to read at young age. At five years I did not want to read Heidi, I was always too many questions as I was reading above average for my age. My first philosopher was Spinoza and my first poem was the Rubaiyat of Omar Khyyam. So, one may gather my papa made me an iconoclast all through my life and I am very grateful to him. 🙏❤️🌍🕊🎵🎶
wow, PROFOUND conversation. So many revelations listening to these wise humans. Inspired to grow food more than ever. Thank you ALL so much for sharing your wisdom.
Thanks Nate! Can you pls do a video about the loss of trees / forest? Long, long ago Iraq had huge forests, verdant green areas, Lebanon, the Arabian Peninsula, North Africa, Iceand, England, all of the Caribbean, North America, but now ... :-( And this affects everything, rainfall, climate patterns, life of all kinds, water quality, etc.
I once read that abundance isn’t having more than you need, it's having exactly what you need. Perhaps our new story created from the ruins will contain this idea. Fantastic roundtable discussion! Thank you so much. 😊
Humanity today is like a waking dreamer, caught between the fantasies of sleep and the chaos of the real world. The mind seeks but cannot find the precise place and hour. We have created a Star Wars civilization, with Stone Age emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technology. We thrash about. We are terribly confused by the mere fact of our existence, and a danger to ourselves and to the rest of life. ~ Edward O. Wilson
Nate Hagens you truly are channeling for me the most Interesting and Relevant people on the conversation today -thank you thank you thank you, your work is Ex Tra Or Di Na Ry -Thank you !! Sharing your videos all around non stop.
Three years ago, my wife and I leased a quarter acre of land in a community farm co-op. As this world as we know it is ending, we are now focusing on how to produce food for our community in a equitable sustainable model. The challenge is. that while Capitalism is transitioning into something new, it still has its stranglehold on our Government and our communities at large. Its hard work being a farmer in general, its even more challenging trying to keep up with inflation, climate change, and changes in power dynamics. I'm open for new possibilities for positive change and momentum towards local based food security, cause I really believe it's necessary, though there is a part of me that is very skeptical on a practical level.
I believe the sense of scarcity comes from the artifical scarcity of money in society because it comes into existence as debt ... I really feel this is under appreciated in defining our over arching feeling about society.The movie description of the male model saying i love you because you give me fish, really touched me deeply.... What a fabulous example of art giving insight into humanity....❤
Nate, as informative and thoughtful as your episodes always are, I feel this one and your other dialogs with permaculturists (is that a word?) are the most practical.
This Nate Hagens discussion is one of my favorites and gave me several new philosophical concept arrows for my quiver. As our global high flying techno-civilization begins to descend from the peak of this one time, 19 TeraWatt bolus of fossil Carbon as energy, and the peak of access to virgin materials, there are ruins ahead that are already written into the end of the story. Is this the only story for humanity? Does it just end? With the end of all things worth living for? To just give up? Or, does this story end to start a new story? Is this the end of the world full stop? Or just the end of the world as we know it? If we believe that this would be the end of the world full stop, then we will continue to throw everything we can at the predicament to maintain the current story. To fight with each other over what is left in a vain and selfish populist attempt to cling to a fading past. Despite any consideration of what they (all life) will have left of the place in the future. A Mordor Future. To Make America Great Again. Or, should we believe that this story can end and another can begin. A new story where we comb through the ruins of the old to find what is useful for our new story. Look for a way to focus what we have left to make good ruins. We now tend to be guided by a market where we endeavor to get money to buy things, and by rules that that tell us the current story must be maintained at all costs. Can we find our way back to the altruistic tendencies of cooperation in our local groups that are still ingrained in us from our evolutionary past. Humans were very good at being humans for a long time. Should we be angry that the story is ending and find some "other" to blame? Or were the promises of eternal growth on a finite planet never realistic? It is no one's fault. As we seek social status, let us try to flip the script so that we no longer covet a private jet and instead elevate those groups that build local, self sufficient cooperative ways of life to high esteem. Groups that understand that we must build better ruins. As we look for a safer place to land. To extend the glide. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-NVeCw-Ljenk.htmlsi=NOBz1Z79NK3A8_nh
Excellent! Thank you all for sharing!❤️💪🌱 I'm working in/on local food production and env. restoration in my hometown, San Diego, CA, and it's a real inspiration to hear about all that you folks are doing in other parts of the world and try to think about how I can learn from your experiences and insights to help build similarly focused groups here. Thank you again!
I'm reminded of a 1970s British TV show called The Good Life, where two professionals decide to chuck it all in and become farmers, living completely off what they produce. In Germany along the railway lines you can see small family plots of land specifically for gardens. It's my understanding Germans are encouraged to have their own vegetable gardens.
This is an incredible presentation! And it drove me to ask if perhaps you might find a discussion with Drs. Rupa Marya (Inflamed) and Nadine Burke-Harris (The Deepest Well) of interest? Both are WoCs (women of culture/color). Their perspectives, along with perhaps someone like Brit Wray or Tori Tsui, would really allow their voices an opportunity. Deran Young, of Black Therapists Rock could also contribute in a round table exploring female leaders in thought and experience with health, childhood trauma, climate anxiety, urban farming, activism, and even psychedelics for healing. It's a cross section of connection among health, climate and inclusivity. Many thanks for your deep dedication to educating us through this format!
"The end of the world as we know it is not the end of the world full stop It's a party not a protest Yes we know about the metacrisis but just plant the potatoes Oh no no, you say tomato I say tomahto" Thank you all so much
For me, this was one of the best talks I’ve heard Nate conduct - so real, so down to earth and practical, and yet so inspiring and really got me thinking. More like this please 🙏
“The Great Simplification” - “Food & Community in the Ruins” If we’re talking about the demise of fossil fuels, Oil in particular, and the breakdown of supply chains as a result of a lack of energy to maintain our present civilisation’s lifestyles; whilst food is obviously important we still need shelter, clothing, fuel for cooking, and for many other things especially heating in winter. To me the discussion centred around local community and smallholder farming, little was said of use of energy to power tractors, combine harvesters, cereal dryers as well as the energy to provide lighting and communication technologies we now take for granted, or are we heading back to subsistence farming or feudalism maybe as society and law and order breakdown, goodness forbid. It was noticeable that both Dougald Hine and Chris Smaje had a lot of the trappings of civilisation around them, Pella Thiel not so much. There’s a lot that needs to be discussed ‘Nate’ to form a cohesive plan especially around systems theory🤔
Of the four people who talked about their philosophy of local food production, only three spoke of their experiences doing it. Nate is still just a potential purchaser of these products. There are many barriers to successfully growing enough of your own food to exist in community, especially without modern machinery and the fossil fuels they consume. Everyone who believes this is important must contribute.
Once you have actually farmed, a whole lot of Romantic notions about agriculture will fall by the wayside. The rest of "Nature" is NOT a smiling, benevolent Earth Goddess, that wants your success. EVERY other lifeform out there is AT LEAST as hungry and motivated as you are. The insects are hungry, the fungi are hungry, the nematodes, snails, and slugs are hungry. If you are trying to subsistence farm, Bambi and Thumper will be more than willing to assist your possibly fatal post-harvest weight loss crash diet traditionally called Winter. Farming in any sense, from just gardening to commercial monoculture, is not simple, nor easy. And that is the main reason so few of us are willing to do it today.
We really do seem to be slipping inexorably towards the abyss. I can not even begin to imagine how we turn things around. The corporations have the entire system locked up: politicians, the media, the military industrial complex, social media, so called 'culture', agriculture and even medicine, they control it all.
They are at the helm but don't really have control, no one is in true control nor is there a plan from the top. Its okay though just focus on what you can control thats why nate always says building relationships is the bestform of resilience we can be building as individuals now
Only a mind numbing string of good luck has saved the US Midwest from big crop failures since 2012. 2012 was a warning, nobody listened. 108F in St Louis was not great for corn production that year, 115F in Spain has not produced bumper crops of olives.
I agree with you. Many people are way too busy on the weekends to cultivate a little piece of land. However, in the coming world necessity will ring out and all of their driving around to far away tournaments and vacation spots will not be possible.
One alternative loophole in the US is that you can buy a small 10-20 acre property and live an alternative lifestyle however you want, living off the land if you can aquire the appropriate tools and keep up with the workload involved in simple systems of food production and asustainable comfortable dwelling. Living like people did in rural areas 100 or so years ago.
@@suzannemcnabb5147I believe he was saying very few people want to work not that they don't have time. It's also obvious that very few people know how to work especially the kind of work that requires us to manipulate natural systems into producing food.
Nate; thank you for this podcast and your contributing guest you invited. I realize that I may be listing to those who are religiously agnostic or even atheists, but I cannot see a significant difference between what I am hearing and the Catholic social teaching of subsidiarity.
Wasn't it Ivan Illich, a liberation theology priest, who wrote and spoke along these lines in the 1970's? I remeber reading his description of conviviality and multi generational farming life. The Holy See was not always well pleased with him though.
As society breaks down. Those who are prepared for a future such as growing food have a problem. There will be desperate people with little survivable skills. They will take by force what they need.
Completely agree. I feel like these speakers are just masterbating to each other while the continue to ignore the important issues of how to defend yoyr food when society breaks down and what these communities will devolve to when climate induced flooding, fires, droughts, and heat domes wipe out wnture communities of farmers growing a diversity of crops. The hopium is staggering. Nate has chosen clicks over the hard discussions. He has the hard talks with economics and oil talks but completly ignores it wuen it comes to food and climate change. He memtions it briefly then dips right into hopium. For gods sake, people, wake up and have the hard discussion already!!!
This is why we have to work as communities to build food security in a way that will serve the whole community, which the panel addressed by saying the solution isn't individual preppers. Any major transition will be messy, and there will be people who need food before they figure out that they're going to have to contribute to producing it. Goal must be that no one gets hungry enough to get desperate and resort to violence to feed themselves. Can't emphasize enough that we have to build these systems now, before there's a major systemic breakdown.
The scarcity in the mindset is very purposeful. We have barely checked all areas for all resources. We have no idea what the real numbers are. We must always believe there will be more.
If you're familiar with the upper Mississippi River Valley, I live on the hillside of one of the coulees. My son, age 13, has a friend on a farm at the top of the hill. The young man told me he's pretty familiar with the woods up there, so I told the small group of boys, you should go find his house. They hiked all afternoon. Strait up the hill, across the woods at the top, to their friend's farm. At least 3 miles as the crow flies. That's what kids need to do. Explore, make friends, they probably used a phone for some navigation, but they had to blaze their own trail. Now they know it. Now they can visit without use of cars.
there needs to be a maximum private property size depending on the average productivity of a region. It could be 10 acres or 100, not more. Any acres owned over that limit should be taxed. The tax revenue could be used to fund training for young farmers and homesteaders to get settled and into production (5 years) This would start the cascading effect of higher density rural communities and peri urban farming.
I think of my grand parent arrived in the US in 1911 ended up on a small farm in upstate NY they had the skills and knowledge to be almost self sufficient , the skills they had are lost to me and no one lives like that anymore except the Amish , if things go south what do you do with 20 million people in NY Tri state area?
My advice to anyone thinking of growing your own food is to start right away. It may take you years to learn to deal with all the challenges you'll come up against, like working out how to protect your food from the other creatures who will appreciate your efforts - rabbits, rats, mice, possums, birds, even ants who run off with your seeds. I've also found that growing food is seldom as easy as a lot of the gardening podcasts make out. I grow food organically and after 3 years I haven't reached the stage of abundance but I will.
Great discussion and perspectives! Thank you! In our 40 years in the agroecology/permaculture space, we have seen many people get into small scale farming only to leave having encountered difficulties. Many common mistakes of new farmers, or established farmers adopting more sustainable methods, can be avoided by hands on learning and seeking mentors. There is a feeling of urgency so I hope that we can begin to have more discussion, exchange of ideas and thoughtful analysis about agriculture. If anyone reading this is in New Mexico I would love to connect.
As for the middle east, Yemen Houthis blew up some Saudi oil refineries, which makes them pretty effective climate activists, even if their goal is more just survival.
Unfortunately, the social structures required to AVOID collapse can only be forged from collapse itself. Overshoot will be civilization’s greatest filter. The cultural structures (our inter-subjective stories) that survive will be the ones that learn the painful (on geologic timescale) lesson of overconsumption.
Well said. Collapse is not only A solution, it is THE only solution left. The notion that disaster can be a friend seems abhorrent to many, but it is no more complicated than medical interventions being a bit brutal when disease is terminal or at least extremely serious. Or a De-Tox being prescribed when you have really overdone the substance indulgence (even if the substance is merely chip butties and deep-fried mars bars).
Excellent conversation. I think we could learn from the Amish. I was lucky. enough to be invited to an Amish church service and then have lunch with them afterward. The Amish have been able to life in agrarian community within modernity.
The Amish around me are very industrious and hard working, they are some what self sufficient but depend on the larger economy for their living , they use propane and even drive tractors, they are not mennonites, the local leaders decide what they can use,the don’t drive cars, I was buying some donuts at there farm and they had a new team of belgiums so I asked her how much they were 4300 each
As a young lad over 50 years ago I had several opportunities to live and work in Amish communities. Their unabashed attachment to the Earth was palpable.
What an amazing experience that must have been. Oddly enough, David Ogilvy, founder of a historic global ad agency, also lived with the Amish for awhile. He loved their simple life even though his work promoted wanting.@@treefrog3349
The Amish are as twisted as any cult. Just because they raise their own food doesn’t make them a role model. Abuse and neglect within their community is horrible. And the obvious lack of gender equality. All kinds of social ills including child labor. All while skating along and skimming off the foundation- paved roads, electricity when they cheat, a market for their goods, military security, such as it is - and shunning that same foundation. And they lay down the same chemicals as a conventional corn farmer.
What about mass conversion of suburban lawns to food plots? Seems like that would address several things at once: restoring some ecosystems, giving people agency and some resilience over some of their food, fostering community, and repurposing the built-environment (to a degree anyway).
That's bound to happen, as soon as people need food and realize grass isn't great to eat. Early adopters in communities and neighborhoods can help by normalizing the practice and sharing their knowledge with others.
You would have to first capture the local Zoning Boards, HomeOwner Associations, and mortgage/insurance industries, as they would immediately stomp all over your truck gardens with court orders about "harming resale value of our assets."
I just finished threshing and winnowing the wheat I grew in my back yard last Spring. It was so satisfying, I want to spend tomorrow gathering up the acorns and planning the next wheat patch. But I will go out and make money instead of gathering food, because I have to make money to live. I would rather make food and even just give it away and not have to deal with money and selling, but that is the world I'm in. I feel like a misfit in this world.
start with cultures...food...labor vs value add...fermentation..sprouts... microgreens all work in small spaces. ...reduces refridgeration too. organize labor around big batches. do preperation parties for cleaning and preping batches of anything. culture!culture!culture! remember the story of Stone Soup!
I'm getting very tired of important discussions like this getting down-regulated in my feed and replaced by click-baity war du jour discussions. I have to make an active effort to find you.
One problem we have is that we have valued efficiency over resiliency. Globalism is all based on it Warehouses on wheels. Having no redundancy of inventory in a "just in time" distribution system. We have seen the flaw in that system as supplied lines stretched and broken during the pandemic. Given the stressors coming down the road at us at a speed of knots we are going to need resiliency at the local level.
Most of our waste is due to just how separated the urban population has become from the actual food production experience. If fresh produce is not "State Fair Blue Ribbon" beautiful, it is either fed into the "processed food" concealment mush-market, or else just tossed to rot. At huge percentages. A true subsistence farmer/Gardner will eat things that would send most modern Urbans straight to their Therapist, and then Lawyer.
US oil production just hit a record high. Global oil production is expected to set a new record in the next year or two. The endowment of CO2 will enhance the vigor of our GMO corn which will nourish our factory farmed cows whose excrement will imbue the atmosphere with methane which will inspire the continuation of the virtuous cycle.
The "individualist" t's part of low tech farming is a total neccessity. I have helpers and learners in quite alot, and all the while that there is another human being on the land, my observational capacities drop because humans take up alot of thought time, they talk and they ask questions and they have needs that, as the host, I have to fulfill. Alone, I can follow a trail of ecological niches and yet again find myslef making breakthrough discoveries because my senses are dedicated to the immediate eco-system. There is alot of guilt that comes with this need, always refusing invitations to dine, to party, to go visit a student's garden and give them the approval that they seek, but if we are going to really get ecological and re build our capacities to be truly empathic, we need time alone with nature, time where we try to fulfill our basic needs with just our observations to guide us.
I'm seeing a lot of denial or just completely ignoring the growing realities that climate change and biosphere collapse is making for the seasoned veteran farmer of all types.
I love that you're not advocates of government mandates, rather education and community changes. Without freedom, we'll have nothing...the W.E.F model wouldn't be good for humanity.
The ongoing war in Gaza is a sign of fatigue in the social/economic system of that whole nation - being dependant on oil tankers arrive and unload their massive cargos by the day - or everything comes to a grinding halt. Are oil tankers required to unload their cargo only in Israel - or China, the US, Europe, Asia and others, too? Depopulating children, young men and women to cap the consumption of fossil fuels in a nation - by the agency of war, civil war or other manufactured atrocities - is no other than a people-recycling process - an effect of the-peak-oil-musical-chairs™-calculator . The breakdown in the core of the fossil fuels age - "Food & Community in the Ruins" - is already here - strong. The Magna Carta requires now overhauling - adding to it the right for humans to understand what Energy really is; "In any system of energy, Control is what consumes energy the most. No energy store holds enough energy to extract an amount of energy equal to the total energy it stores. No system of energy can deliver sum useful energy in excess of the total energy put into constructing it. This universal truth applies to all systems. Energy, like time, flows from past to future" (2017).
Am I missing something here? Local food is fine, what about the non-rural population? How do you feed a city? And is this farming happening after climate has returned to our current niche?
Hi. You can’t cover all topics in single podcast. Next months Roundtable will be on “can we feed 8 billion people without fossil inputs- (or minimal) and how” 🙏
Hei, I have just had a meeting with 12 people where we watch your video about the great simplification, and we talked about what we should do. Tank you!@@thegreatsimplification
Hi nate, before it comes out could I ask there is the reality of what animals mean, if you are going down that route. I used to be a vegan and there is a very large problem that doesn't get discussed, all studies are revolving around diet, people will say "a vegan diet" is the most environmentally friendly. It's a myth built on all the emissions lumped onto the edible portion. We use activated carbon from bones, we use hundreds of thousands of tons for rendered meat for pet food etc. Acids in plastics to asphalt, medicines, gelatine in toilet paper, etc etc Saying we can replace the least dense product and the whole issue is solved is incorrect. Our farming now means a lot of crops, those all have waste, we feed animals more of this waste than human grade food, the more vegans and vegetarians there are the cheaper meat becomes. I usually only eat beef, never pork and rarely chicken, beef cows are majorly, around the world, on non arable, weather irrigated and self fertilised land, to have a grown replacement is going to take more synthetic fertilisers, ground water irrigated and more tractors and fossil fuels used, then, there is no available grown replacement for the rendered meat etc but if there were it would need at the very least a doubling of the crop land we have now, an impossibility. @@thegreatsimplification
Am I wrong? Community means us. Not us with adjectives or definition. When we homo sapiens add to "us" we start to become the opposite of community do we not?
Many cultures have lived in reletive balance with their surroundings for millennia as vegetarians - along side their farmed animals which they gathered milk, skins, wool from.
I would love to hear from some ideas about urban existence, where most humans ACTUALLY exist. How is this whole small animal agro stuff supposed to work in our high density reality? 90% of folks can't relate, and seems elitist. How are people without capital supposed to deal? POC who are historically marginalized to have NO capital to participate in this fantasy farm future? I love this podcast, but lately these ideas of fun fantasy farming with cute animals is annoying me, a person living a low capital, high density lifestyle❤
I hear you. I often wonder about those born into large cities like New York, who have never been able to travel outside the city. My heart goes out to you and I wish you some urban future with the joy of raising your own food. Take care.
@@joshgibbs6878exactly. If you’re not skilling up, you’re checking out. You’ve had the warnings. There will be a great winnowing and that guy in the low ride blue race car just won’t make it.
@@suzannemcnabb5147 I was born in Los Angeles, and have never lived in a small town, or rurally! Have grown my own food here, though at a small scale. The more I read these comments, the more I get why folks in cities might not want to venture out of them. Seems to be a bit of hostility, and we aren't even in resource scarcity yet! Y'all are gonna Mad Max it out there? IMHO, there has to be a place of kindness for all people, no matter their lot in life, or the future will be grim indeed. Not one I want to participate in. 💜
Just wondering about these community farms that have popped in the hollowed-out urban plots. Usually, one or two people run a small plot, using all kinds of Monsanto products. As compare to these local community farms, is the EROI better for the gianormous farms, run industrially using these semiautomatic tractors and machines in Kansas or California?
There will be re-growth among the Ruins - but the Ruins have only just started, and the endscape is going to be like the many visible ruins left by previous civilizations and empires but on a Giga or Zetta or even Quetta scale. Also, for most of us there is not going to be a choice about going back to the Past - we are going to be flung back into it willy nilly, so living simply is not going to prevent Collapse but instead arise out of it in a somewhat brutal manner. Also, there is no way of parcelling out fertile land - still less groundwater - in a world of 8 billion soon to be 9 billion; this is arrant non-sense. Dennis and Donella Meadows were systems analysts at MIT and lead authors of The Limits to Growth (1972). Donella sadly died aged 60, but Dennis is still with us aged about 81. Asked how he would update The LImits to Growth for the 21st century, he responded as one might expect of a top--notch Systems Analyst - "Disasters are now the only way to solve all the problems of the planet." He went on to explain that only by stopping Human Growth in all its forms, can humans and many other species survive. The planet itself will survive anyway - and its natural systems may be the key to stopping Human Growth, because nothing else will. A few humans can change their outlook, but most either can't or won't. So Nature will have to crack the whip - and it will. As usual. Out of the FUTURE Ruins, which we can barely imagine, will some of us re-emerge? Let's hope so. Disasters are impartial about who they take and who they leave - but probably some of us will survive to conserve all the wonderful and delightful aspects of humanity and pass them on to future generations. My mother, working at the British Embassy in Saigon in the early 1950s, was very struck by the happy, laid-back lifestyle in neighbouring Cambodia. No-one worked more than a couple of hours a day, yet all lived well and comfortably in terms of food, shelter, arts, music and even medicine. Yet crucially, such "primitive" peoples (all over the world) are often simply Remnants of former overdeveloped civilizations which have collapsed. The Remnants have returned to a simpler way of life, and the past glories of - say - Angkor Wat, are just a memory. What remains, is sustainable living pre-Collapse (i.e. the more distant Past). Plus a lot of corpses. We don't know how many lives were lost when previous civilizations bit the dust (including recent collapses like the Ottoman Empire) - but there must have been spectacular loss of life during the collapse and after it. Indeed civilizational Collapse can be defined as a rapid and enduring loss of population, identity and socio-economic complexity. So loss of population is integral to Collapse - and in many ways necessary, as overgrowth of population commensurate with available resources is also a primary CAUSE of Collapse. If an Empire could artifically "sustain" 500,000 people what would it collapse to? No-one knows in relation to past Empires, and no-one knows in relation to the projected 10 billion humans in our current Global Empire. In microcosm, we know that the arrival of the potato caused Ireland's population to explode to 8 million from 4 million - and when potato blight removed the potato it collapsed back to 4 million. That seems as good a guess as any - i.e. world population will go back to half what it is at the final Collapse point. It could collapse now - the blight was a total surprise - so back to 4 billion. Or if we last to 2100, back to 5 billion. Either way, it is not going to be pretty. Especially as some of Ireland's losses of life were prevented by emigration - this is increasingly not an option these days.
Yeeees ...... I am a fan of simplification, but this is a bit too simplistic. The proverb means that it is best to follow the traditions or customs of a place being VISITED. By polite friendly and temporary Visitors. Saint Monica (332-387 AD) and her son, Saint Augustine of Hippo ((354-430 AD), discovered that Saturday was observed as a fast day in Rome, where they planned to visit. However, it was not a fast day where they lived in Milan. They consulted Saint Ambrose who said "When I am here (in Milan) I do not fast on Saturday, when in Rome I do fast on Saturday" That reply is said to have brought about the saying "When in Rome, do as the Romans do". Monica and her son seem to have been Berber, ethnicity-wise. Ambrose was Italian. In the late Roman Empire, Italians had gotten a bit submerged - this got rectified, somehow, but seems to be happening all over again. But anyway everyone involved in this aphorism was A) Christian and B) fasting - it was only a slight difference, and in any case, Italy soon returned to its native sons (thanks to the collapse of the Roman Empire). Soon afterwards, Hippo (now in Algeria) got colonized by Arabian Islam (in 699 AD to be precise). We do not know if this was preferable to being colonized by Rome. Probably much of a muchness. Then it was the turn of the French. Through all this, some ancient Berber customs and also the language, seem to have survived, by some miracle. There is a Berber flag, though Berbers are not a Nation in the UN sense. Curiously, it is a huge red letter Z (in Berber script), because Z in Tifinagh represents resistance and the martyrs/free men of the Ima-Zighen people. @@antonyjh1234
Just calling it prepping, in no way brings up connotations of rugged individualism except maybe in some diluted liberals imagination. No prepper dismisses community as something that's nonessential.
At 1 hr 17 in "...there should be fewer people..." Of course. We can not carry 8 billion people. This in geological time most unusual. We are in overshoot. The weight of humans comprises 35% of the mass of mammals. Add our livestock (to fee ourselves) and that is another 60%. Of the weight of birds 70% our poultry, mainly chickens and turkeys. Why is it that nearly all environmentalists run away from thinking about population? The world population has doubled 3 times since 1800 from 1 billion to 8 billion today on the one time energy endowment of fossil fuel and the great dieoff will follow its lessoning supply. Being childfree is not all "so sad" but is exactly what is needed. One does the most good by not reproducing because you are not sewing the seed of future environmental destruction following us. We have probably started the 6th great extinction event because of our numbers and may ourselves become a victim of our own creation. The more of us, the less of everything else, even given the one time energy pulse. It's very simple. Ecology is very simple. We do not take more than our fair share of the ecosystem.
Some of the richest people on earth do farming, people who view farming as backwards need to get out of bad mindsets and get into the reality of economy and literature.
i really like the idea of local food produciton. there's one problem: liberal states will never allow this to happen. they are steadfastly against private property ownership. We need to start making it legal to own land again, like our forefathers invisioned.
Huh? Everywhere I've lived in the US reality is the opposite. People who are looking for land to grow food can't find it or afford it because it's privately owned already. The amount of good farmland that is lost to pavement and "development" every day is appalling. Where is it that you're talking about where it is illegal to own land?
I'll make another prediction. To save humans from capitalism most people will turn to Socialism .Private property rights will be a thing of a more barbaric past.
As long as it’s a form of cooperative, where people maintain control with a democratic approach. Much of rural Canadian prairies were using aspects of this when it was settled by Europeans. Then the mainstream governments thought private ownership progressive, and they were dismantled. Large corporations took over, and the money rises to the top shareholders
