The Hard Bullet for Progressives to Bite
What A Way to Go may not make much money because “Collapse doesn’t sell. ”
More than one supporter has told us this. We want to be paid something, of course, for the monumental amount work we’ve put in, and continue to put in, to this movie. I don’t have fear about not making a pile of money at this. I’ve always had enough, and I’ve never had a pile because I never cared that much about it. No, my fear is that it will make people mad. It’s scary to make people mad.
I’m coming to terms with that fear, however. Some people will be angry with us. Some will reject us. What’s most likely, though, as we take What A Way To Go on the road is that people will act out the familiar pattern of well-mannered, civilized humans when confronted with something uncomfortable. They will just quietly and politely ignore the message.
Regardless, we know that, besides the most clueless and insulated of the very wealthy, everyone else knows that things are not right. We all feel it. The weather’s not right. Our collective paychecks don’t go far. Our collective debt is huge and getting huger. We try to keep up a hopeful attitude. But we know things are not good. We see only the very rare politician that we like and trust, and almost never see one of those make it to Washington.
People want to be hopeful. We want to believe what we learned in school about the miracles of science. We want to believe in the American values of innovation and progress; that we are indeed pursuing progress; and that progress will eventually make life better for everyone on the planet. People want to believe these things because people are basically good.
What people actually experience, if they stop shopping long enough to notice, is the opposite. Lives are stressed. Work is unsatisfying. Children are unhappy. What most have to look forward to is going out to eat. Think about it. It’s a place where someone will take care of you and treat you with a modicum of respect. At least in a chain restaurant, the average person has some power. You can leave a nice tip. Or not.
So while most mainstream folks are in deep denial, progressives are just in moderate denial. Progressives know we’re in serious, very serious trouble with the climate. They don’t doubt Mr. Gore’s statistics. They know there’s no debate. And they are aware that fossil fuel energy is both dangerous and limited.
Progressives are less immune than others to their experience of the ramifications of all of this. They feel it more. And to keep a little emotional distance from the really tough realities, they hold on to the innocent hope that there is time. Surely humans are so smart and so good that when it gets bad enough we will come up with some sweet innovations to suck carbon and heat from the atmosphere and put it somewhere that it will not do any more harm. Surely we will develop some kind of technology to keep our high-energy, highly comfortable lifestyles possible.
I mean, if you cover the desert in the Southwest with solar panels, that will take care of our energy problems and carbon problems in one fell swoop, right? It’s just a matter of political will, right? We just need a strong progressive in the oval office, and in many other offices, and all these problems will go away, right? We just need a popular uprising to take control of the means of production, at last, and we can keep up the good life that we’ve started here, the good life we’ve gotten so very used to.
We just need to do it right. Right?
What’s the truth about all of this? Is it possible that we can innovate enough new technology to meet the current human energy demand with non-polluting, renewable sources? None of the sources I’ve seen with reliable, holistic data say we can. William Catton, author of Overshoot, says in What A Way To Go that the way we are living now, we overshot the carrying capacity of the planet with the population size we had at the time of the Civil War. Yikes. That’s like five and a half billion people ago. Five and a half billion! That’s a lot of people. More than will fit in your new Prius. More than the local co-op grocery can feed with organic food. That would be a lot of organic ramen to come up with. This is serious.
Even if we could find a magic energy elixir that would keep things going as they are, there are other gigantic questions that follow. Could we pull off a mass consciousness change that would ensure that we utilized that energy elixir in fair, sustainable, life-supportive ways? I don’t think so. Look around. Look at the world that has been created since the discovery of the last magic energy elixir humans got their hands on. Do you like this world where the rich get richer and richer and spiritually sicker and sicker while the poor get poorer and poorer and the shrinking middle class works longer and longer and longer? I don’t.
We don’t need more energy. Looking for a technofix is a distraction. We need something else entirely. If more energy were going to create a saner, more spiritual, more just world, that would have happened in the last two hundred years. We’ve had our high dose of magical energy. It hasn’t helped. It’s made things worse. We’re teetering on human-caused extinction of our own species, to say nothing of the human-caused wreckage to the rest of the species already in progress. That hasn’t happened before.
No. It’s not more energy we need. It is a consciousness change, a radical reconnection to life itself, and to one another, that we ache for.
Some of us are kind of aware of this. We want a bunch of people to wake up, quick. We hope for that. We carpool to our jobs and we shop locally and we do the best we can. Some of us participate in protests and write emails to our congresspeople. Some of us have changed every single light bulb in our houses and recycle every scrap of paper and every aluminum can and resist all unnecessary driving. We’re hoping there will be a mass consciousness change.
We want that so much.
The sad possibility that Tim and I have chewed on these past three years is that there may be no mass movement. As much as we want it, there may be no gentle transition to an ecologically viable way to live harmoniously with the rest of the non-human world. We’re on a crash course and there doesn’t seem to be any widespread move to stop.
Of course it is possible mass consciousness will shift. Until there are no longer masses of Americans alive (or Chinese, or Europeans or Africans), there will be that possibility. I like thinking about that possibility. But I don’t spend time hoping for it anymore.
Tim and I wrestled with this issue continually as we researched and wrote What A Way To Go. I tend to have more gentle optimism about people, while Tim tends, with huge doses of wry humor, to be more cynical. It’s a good balance. Truth is, now we both cry, and not infrequently, about how deep the denial is in America, and even in our local community. We cry because the destruction continues to increase. It’s very sad.
You see, I wanted to believe that our documentary would be just one log on a very huge fire that would burn bright to bring about a mass consciousness shift. I’d still like to believe that. I still hold it as a remote possibility. But as I watch gas prices rise right alongside carbon emissions and new parking decks and more freeways and multiplex shopping centers, it is hard to hold that as a wise vision to live by. It’s starting to look downright dumb to make personal decisions about how to act, where to live and whom to live near, based on the hope of mass consciousness change. I don’t see it happening.
What I do see is a small but growing number of people waking up fully. That is heartwarming. It’s great. But juxtaposed with those people continue to be huge numbers of people who buy and consume and throw away the planet, day after day, week after week, with no thought at all. All of this, despite the fact that a very well-made and highly successful documentary addressing one inconvenient truth, was given an Academy Award. That’s as mainstream as a radical message goes. And as a result of Mr. Gore’s documentary, climate change has become a household word and, for progressives, the fact of climate change being human-caused is beyond debate.
I’m sad to say however, that as a whole, progressives seem to be in denial about the radical change in lifestyle it will require to reduce carbon emissions to levels that will matter. We need a 70% reduction, yesterday. Today we need 72%. With continued growth, tomorrow it becomes a 75% reduction. Turning off lights won’t cut it. Taking the bus to work in the corporation that is making disposable plastic doo dads by the millions won’t help either.
This is the hard bullet we’re going to have to bite to get the job done: We’re going to have to fundamentally change how we live. To make that change, we’ll have to seriously challenge some very entrenched notions: things like unlimited private property rights, the idea of progress, the necessity of profit and, god forbid, the sanctity of capitalism. In What a Way To Go we begin to take apart many of those notions, so much as that is possible in two hours.
Do you think two yahoos with that kind of message and no political clout whatsoever will make it across the radar of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences? Shit, we’re freaking out film festival judges. We know this is an amazing movie. Way better than some of the stuff that danced into Park City. But people aren’t jumping to hear or put on the big screen, what Dan Armstrong called in his review, the whole truth. Not in this culture. Not in Empire.
No, collapse doesn’t sell. Not to the masses. And not to our most active progressives. I couldn’t believe it when I saw my MoveOn.org email asking me to protest gasoline prices. Eli, what are you thinking? Isn’t it time we talk about Peak Oil? I mean, like, at least a little bit?
I don’t mean to be flippant. I’m just scared. Tim and I are about to take off on the road. Two introverts with big mouths. What will our progressive brothers and sisters say to us? Will they smile and tell us to keep up the good work? Most will. A few will walk away mad. But I’m starting to sense that every once in a while, and maybe more and more, people will give us a hug and thank us for helping them commit to do the things they’ve needed to do, but haven’t. Because What A Way To Go, if you let it, will help you feel, really feel, what’s happening.
What’s happening is hard to look at. It’s a hard bullet to bite. It’s a hard reality to feel. But feeling is what motivates us to act. And it’s only when we act that our lives and our world will change.
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June 14th, 2007 at 10:48 pm
Tim and Sally
Keep well on the road.
Call me if in Phoenix
Richard
June 14th, 2007 at 11:32 pm
Hi there Sally:
You are right. People usually only like disaster films if they are made in Hollywood and they can remind themselves that they are merely movies, and not some semblence of reality. Al Gore’s film was reality in the making, and coming at us faster than even he thought it would. So whenever people are grumbling about gas prices, I shake my head and then shake my fist at the media, news, Hollywood, and all, for not giving people the opportunity to decide what to do. Unless you read, and/or read on the internet, you are being fed propaganda. The Happy Motoring story that James Howard Kuntsler talks about. And a big punch in the face to the government who lies to us regularly when they are putting on their show.
Some days I am angry, and some days I want to sleep. I get up and go to work because I am not feeding this system (I work in nursing homes) but trying to help people. Trying to save enough money to get out of Florida before another Katrina smacks us in the face and we lose everything we have…and it ain’t much. I think of Katrina as a prelude in almost every way to what will happen…violence, indifference, abandonment, loss, getting screwed over by corporations, lying, and the list goes on.
I am not so sure that we won’t find ourselves in a nuclear situation, and if so, let it fall right on me. I can be very tough, but not in the face of radiation poisoning.
It is hard to mobilize yourself much less others, and those who want to know are fewer and they have no easy exits. Do we walk away from homes, mortgages, jobs to go where? Is there any safety?really? Only relatively. I just have to pray that there is time enough (I am thinking in terms of weeks and months now) to get a plan in place.
May your travels be received by some as the awakening… at least some good feelers, who can also think.
Godspeed, Gail
June 15th, 2007 at 2:39 am
How refreshing Sally, you just served up another big helping of truth and it’s going down just fine.
The weird thing is, it’s not the truth that is scaring me these days, as bad as that truth is, it’s the lack of truth that is scaring me.
A good day for me these days is when I can feel.
A bad day is when I feel disconnected.
My days lately have been how to market a course about Collapse and our possible responses. I can relate to your feelings about marketing the movie. “Collapse doesn’t sell.” It’s hard to even give away information about Collapse.
Problem is, that is what I feel compelled to teach.
My last set of courses was dubbed, Less is More, environmental and social justice, that was a few months ago. I now feel strongly that it’s out of date.
The only way I feel capable of putting my message across now, is to scare people with the truth and then offer to hold their hands while together we face an uncertain future with eyes wide open.
I appreciate you continuing to share your raw experiences. I know I’ve thanked you before as have so many of the others blogging on here.
Thing is everytime I read the posts you and Tim are putting out there I feel really grateful all over again. Of all the stuff coming into my inbox, other than my son in Montreal, I get most excited when I see that one of you has posted a new blog entry.
I feel, yes feel that someone not only cares but that they understand and that is gold to me.
Vivienne
June 15th, 2007 at 7:33 am
Right on, Sally! The hard, painful truth: until we feel it, we won’t act. And the longer we resist feeling it, the more painful it will be. It’s a universal - dare I say karmic? - principle.
As I read this posting, I thought, “In 20 years this film will be used in high school and college history classes — if there is still electricity, if there are still high schools and colleges, if there are still history classes.” Maybe there will still be a few people trying to explain our time to younger people. Maybe history and psychology will finally be taught together, and the mechanisms of inflation and denial will be used to explain the history of the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Maybe, amidst the human mayhem and die off, there will be a few lifeboat communities that will have retained the technologies to show your film as evidence of the inevitability and necessity of empire’s collapse. And that will help young people to get over their anger and sense of deprivation, and to embrace the long-term vision of a sane, reverent, ecologically sustainable, emotionally satisfying culture.
Of course, in the short term, that possibility is not very consoling for you. Film festival judges don’t consider such criteria, nor do movie theater managers. Maybe your film will have to flow through the underground channels of the grassroots - in living rooms and churches, offices, and community centers. Maybe it won’t make a lot of money, but I hope it at least makes enough to get you out of debt and pay for your launch tour. I’ll pay to see it!
Thank you for your honesty, Sally. I think truth telling has great value, especially at a time like this when so many people are afraid to feel and speak the truth. Personally, I think that sanity and courage depend on it.
Suzanne
June 15th, 2007 at 8:54 am
Sally, I certainly share your fears and concerns. I’ve been trying to inform people about peak oil for 2+ years. I even have the luxury of a trapped audience in a college classroom, but I still don’t feel I’ve been very successful. I think that generally speaking, it’s just too much for the average person to take in. People are so deeply entrenched in the consumer world and in identities that they can’t give up. It all seems like “a normal world” to them – fast food, shopping malls, television etc. They may glimpse the problems we are discussing for a moment, but that’s generally not enough to get some change going.
At one level, it’s just too much effort to actually change and then, of course, they would also have to go against the grain (peer pressure) as you and I and others are doing. Most people just don’t have the character (or the masochism?) for it. They would also have to have the capacity to sustain the “idea” that there is a real problem over the concrete factual world around them which appears to be continuing “business as usual”. This is cracking slowly, but, the malls are still open and the credit cards still haven’t maxed out – amazingly enough.
But where does that leave me personally? Well, I can tell you that I’ve have had my fair share of ridicule over insisting that this (PO) is a real issue – especially in academia.
And then there’s the Main Stream Media (MSM). I’ll tell you a little something I’ve learned the hard way. I’ve been an activist (enviro, peace and justice) my whole life (53), but I had never seen this soooo clearly as with the Iraq war. During the lead up to the war (summer of 2002 on) I was reading the world press. I also had a pretty good handle on history (middle east and US foreign policy). I knew that the reasons for war that were being presented as fact by the Bush people were not fact. (Anyone could have known this if he/she just did a little research). There was plenty of dissent – for instance in the pentagon and the CIA - but the MSM wouldn’t pick it up. I wrote letter after letter, op ed after op/ed in the local papers. People like me were “Un American and crazies”. My efforts didn’t have the slightest affect.
So what have I really learned? 1: If its not in the MSM, if Joe Suburbia is not being beaten over the head with it all day every day by the empires propaganda machine, then it’s not an important issue. In other words, if it’s not on MSM, it’s not happening. Or, “must be a fringe kook thing”.
We seldom go out to restaurants anymore (growing a big garden), but we indulged the other day. There’s a new (?) trend. Restaurants everywhere (?) seem to now have televisions in every corner. So, people can watch TV in every room of their house (not connecting to other people) and then they can continue the whole isolation thing at the restaurant. This is so weird. I guess some of these new cars even have televisions in them so they can watch on the way. Anyway, I’m digressing, but you get the point: the MSM is a giant propaganda machine that keeps the collective mind focused on “reality”. Lots of things are omitted from this “reality”.
Point number 2: If something is repeated as fact often enough in the MSM it will be treated as fact by Joe Suburbia even if it has little or only marginal relationship to the actual world (always a distant thing – especially the natural world). I won’t go into detail here – you get the idea. So, much as I love your movie, I don’t think that it will have much affect on Joe. Joe is in for a really a really big surprise and a rough ride. (We’re all in for a really rough ride) I vacillate between contempt and compassion for Joe.
I spend a lot of time at The Oil Drum everyday. Talk about a fact based, reality based, analysis, that’s it. But, compelling as the arguments are and impressive as the credentials of the main contributors are, the site seldom makes any main stream impression. Not MSM.
So, anyway, I’m showing the film to about 15 people next weekend (23rd) here at our old house. I’m a little anxious about it. You see, during the last 3 years (peak oil reality awareness time for me too), I’ve found it increasingly impossible to attempt effecting change in the old way ( i.e. the political route including lobbying, organizing etc etc.) I find it hard to believe that 10 or even 5 years from now the federal government or even the state government will have any capacity to address the issues.
I see things becoming extremely local. BUT, at the local level we are all very much isolated consumers. There are few and very inadequate local social and economic structures and institutions in place for the coming change.
I also managed (like you) to develop a more comprehensive view of things during the last 3 years or so. This is one of the biggest problems. People talk about climate change (for example) and then propose solutions to this seemingly isolated problem - a la Gore. But that’s not it. You have to try to make the connections with the economic, the geopolitical, the social, and other pressing environmental issues (water, topsoil, species). When viewed in isolation any issue may seem workable – as if there are solutions that will allow the system to continue as it is (i. e. unlimited growth, consumerism etc). But when you start to see the interrelationships of the issues, watch out. Now the real scope of the circumstances comes into focus and also the fact (and I mean this as I write it) that there really are no easy solutions if any. It becomes a face reality moment when you look at the whole, especially when you include population issues. So, OK, the movie (seen it 4 times) does that. That’s it. You’re a Cassandra, you’re a bearer of stark truths and bad news. Deal with it, but know that I - and I’m sure many others that you know and don’t know – are there with you. You have my total support. The way I see it: Somebody might get mad. Somebody might call you names. Somebody might shoot you. At least you lived with a certain degree of integrity. You didn’t go into that deep sleep that is our consumer world. No regrets.
So, I’ve got all of these “progressive” friends coming over next weekend to watch the movie. Are they ready to make the jump into stark reality? Are they ready to start working on seeing the issues as connected in the real world. Are they ready to understand that changing the light bulbs and buying a prius and writing more letters to bought and paid for politicians isn’t going to be enough??? Are they ready to say: “we’re going to have to figure out how to live differently and work to help other people do the same?” We shall see.
Well, I’m hopeful, but you know, I’ve had enough shit thrown at me in the last few years that I’m no longer naïve at any level. It’s not just Joe Suburbia that’s asleep at the wheel. Progressives or Liberals or whatever you want to call them are mostly absorbed into the system too.
One thing though, leftist politics does have within it a small kernel of hope. It is based on being critical of the system and those in power (as opposed to conservative politics). But are they ready to be really critical? – in the broadest and deepest historical sense. We shall see.
One final thing I will share with you. I had a student do an independent study on peak oil. She gave a very fine, comprehensive, fact based presentation to a number of faculty from different departments. There was a comment: “Why aren’t you presenting the solutions?” “Well, you know, I laid out the problem and talked about how this won’t be easily solved for various factual reasons”. This didn’t go over well. There is this assumption in this culture that everything can be solved – that everything must have a solution. It’s “just not possible that this can’t be solved”. The psychology of empire is one in which all problems are solvable. There is nothing that we cannot overcome. We’re Americans, we’re “Can Do people”. This is the Hero’s hubris indeed – but it’s the way it is. What a jolt it’s going to be. So, that’s what you’re up against. Especially when you look at the whole of things – we ain’t gonna solve this one with genetically modified Nano-Mcnuggets that self reproduce without causing greenhouse gasses or whatever.
Good luck to you and Tim. I’m working on a public showing here in Missouri in the fall. You always have a place to stay – a ride – whatever you need here in Southeast Missouri (upper edge of the Mississippi Delta. ) Whatever you need.
Bob
June 15th, 2007 at 9:55 am
Sally, keep trying and don’t give up. Saying this to you and Tim, as I say this to myself every day, and several times a day. There’s really NO ONE in my daily encounter group that has any sense of the BIG picture…what we are rolling towards, with gathering speed, from multiple planetary stresses. God, bless us all as we try to stay centered and get prepared, whatever that may be for each of us individually and with our families, many of whom have absolutely no clue.
Many times a day I fall into the pit of despair when I contemplate what might be in store for all of us. But, then, I remember my purpose - I accept my thoughts and feelings, focus on the next best thing to do to accomplish it, and act.
Thank you for being out there and doing something about it. God bless, Nancy
June 15th, 2007 at 10:39 am
Hi Sally–
A friend of mine died on Wednesday. In the Jewish faith you conduct what is called a ‘Chevra Kadisha’, literal translation ‘holy society’ or ‘burial society’. The observance is a ritual bath or cleansing of the body in preparation for its burial. The body is washed and purified, clothed and wrapped in linen and then placed into the coffin. Forgetting for a moment that the practice belongs to a faith, I thought to myself that everyone, young and old, should be required to honor the dead in such a manner. Humans seem terrified to experience the truth of their existence much less their environment. To come face to face with death, to become familiar with dying, to befriend death seems a process that humbles us in the face of our vulnerability. As our hearts open the deep desire to care and share and be cared for is no longer humiliating, weak, embarassing. We are strengthened by the communal power of love. We are no longer afraid to lose realizing that all is so fleeting from the start. Truth becomes more vital that delusion; sharing more fulfilliing than power or possession. Following the Chevra Kadisha, the body is watched or sat with between that time and the burial. People sit with the body continuously to honor both the dead and the living. The family is comforted knowing that the body and the person have been nurtured through the end time.
The earth is dying and noone wants to sit with it; noone wants to pay homage; noone wants to hurt and suffer at the loss. Instead of suffering, we create our own pain. Our failure to acknowledge our nature and the nature of nature causes us to build edifices to deceipt and lies in the forms of institutional deceipt, temples of easy answers, mosques of communal delusion. We avoid, obfuscate, politicize, separate, isolate, cajole and in the end strangle ourselves. Humanity is choking with its fear of dying and even as it spurts and sputters, gasps for last breaths, thirsts for quenching it fears losing what it has in a deception that provides workers for the coporations, poverty for the do-gooders, and armies for the power hungry defenders of justice.
I do not think that I share your sadness or regret, though. We live in a defining time. There will be others. The world will go through this pain, this folly, on its journey…(to annihalation?) Can I share something personal with you? I cheer when American boys and girls are killed in Iraq. (Please excuse me) It appears that lessons are hard learned and the faster the lack of human integrity causes this pain, starvation, degradation, humiliation and the lies to become revealed for what they are, only then might people act. Political evolution seems to me futile. Democracy appears a failed experiment. Men (boys?) have taken over and they will not let go unless there is blood in the streets. People will die. There will be revolution or we will be reduced to a ‘Mad Max’ scenario of scavengers, hunters of scrap, murderers for water, bands of children weaned on garbage strewn streets educated by thiefs and embezzlers (and those will be the good guys) and all this controlled by Democrats and Republicans plying false hopes, legislative dreams, judiciary deceptions and executive executions.
And, that is where Anais Nin comes in. When will we fear the opening of the human psyche and heart less than living in the bud of time? I do not know. For me, I will continue to care for the dead and dying hoping that those who are in abject pain may soon discover the fundamental joy of suffering.
June 15th, 2007 at 12:34 pm
I’ve been learning about this looming global calamity for three years now, A couple of years ago I “got it” - comprehended the true magnitude of the problem. I kept on searching for “solutions”, and every door I tried to open turned out to be locked. A year ago I accepted that there really aren’t any “solutions” to the problem as it is normally defined (the definition I use is the Club of Rome’s World Problematique with its interlocked and interacting set of global problems, bur it really all comes down to population).
The realization that there is no way out of our box is tremendously debilitatitng. It was only a couple of months ago that I realized there is another way to see humanity’s future that can restore some hope.
I’ve written a number of articles on my web site that address aspects of this, but I’ll post one article here to give you an idea what I’m talking about. It’s entitled “Got Solutions?”
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When you start talking about “solutions” to environmental or energy problems you need to be very clear what outcome you’re trying to achieve. Is your goal “Stopping global warming”? Is it “Maintaining business as usual”? Is it “Making the transition to a low-carbon civilization more gradual to enable us to adapt”? Is it “Making sure that individuals, families and communities have an opportunity to protect themselves from the coming changes”? What are the problems you’re trying to solve, what is the the outcome you want to achieve, and is the outcome in fact achievable? More to the point, if the big problem isn’t solvable are there smaller subsets of it that might be?
My position on the big problems we are facing is simple. We will not stop global warming. We will not stop oil and gas depletion. Attempts to achieve either of those objectives through carbon conservation, fuel substitution or efficiency improvements will fail. This failure will be due to insurmountable issues of scale, timeframe and declining net energy, but more importantly we will fail because too many nations and individuals have demonstrated their unwillingness to sacrifice anything toward those ends. This expectation of inaction isn’t all that surprising, because the tenets of deep ecology (humanity is an element of the natural world little different from any other living organism) and evolutionary insights (consumption and population growth in all organisms are genetic imperatives) mean that humanity will not be able to effect the wholesale behavioral changes needed to prevent the calamity.
However, there are achievable solutions to a different but related problem.Given that humanity as a species will come through the bottleneck and emerge into a much less populous and severely resource-depleted world, how do we ensure that the right cultural structures are in place (recognizing the constraints of evolutionary psychology) to enable a truly sustainable civilization to reconstitute itself? This will require the survival of sufficient people in the right circumstances with the right kinds of knowledge and the right value systems. All these things can be promoted right now.
Talking about creating a new sort of civilization sounds very difficult - certainly harder to do than building solar panels. Paradoxically, I think the progress toward this goal is already well under way. The mechanism is what I talk about in the “I” of I HELP: the distributed, resilient global movement of local environmental and social justice groups. I have become convinced that they are the key - the launching pad of the next civilization. All the needed qualities exist already in this movement: - the resilience, the concerns about sustainability, the eco-consciousness, the social awareness, the gathering and promotion of the right sorts of knowledge, the rejection of centralized power structures. Plus they seem to have in their hands the key to the whole ball of wax for a sustainable civilization: an orientation towards matriarchy.
I’m going to be writing a major work about this over then next six months to a year, because I have come to believe this understanding is crucial. The process is already under way. Without any leaders, conscious direction or even a global agreement on the nature of the problem, humanity seems to be giving birth to exactly what it needs to heal the biosphere and move forward into a sustainable future. I know this all sounds radically prophetic and science-fictionish, but when faced with the probability of a singularity such as we could get from massive resource depletion, global warming and a population crash, the only sure bet is that life on the other side of it will unfold by different rules than we operate under now.
I have no way of knowing if my spidey-sense is telling me the truth about the shape of that future or the vehicle that will take us there, but that really doesn’t matter. A civilization with a healthy dose of ecological sensibility, an orientation towards sustainability and a sense of justice for all living creatures including our fellow humans can’t be a bad thing no matter how events unfold. And what better mechanism to inoculate a civilization with those qualities than 3 million disconnected groups? Think of them as antibodies swimming in humanity’s bloodstream, summoned by our planet’s dis-ease…
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I hope this helps someone.
Paul
June 15th, 2007 at 1:36 pm
“All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.” ~Arthur Schopenhauer
You have a movie that is TRUTH as you see it and therefore you’ve made a movie that will stand the test of time.
As you’ve no doubt found, you’re helping to expose a truth that is somewhere in the first or second stage for 98% of the population, film judges included. I applaud your courage, conviction, and thank you for the time you spent helping to inform us all.
However, all is not lost. I am in your camp, as are many many others.
I have dedicated the last 4 years of my life trying to expose the truth but I have adopted a ‘back-door’ strategy wherein I demonstrate that our economy will fail. People sit up and take notice when you mention ruined 401ks and failed entitlement programs. Once a crack appears in one set of beliefs (in this case a belief in our monetary system) there is then room to squeeze a few other truths in before fear seals the crack shut.
At least, that’s been my experience and I’ve been successful in front of audiences approaching 100 at a time.
But it’s time for a movement. A social movement, a political movement - I don’t care what we call it - but it’s time.
The alternative is to give up hope, learn to garden, and wonder how you’ll respond the first time hungry people invade it.
So we need to craft a message of hope and optimism, which I have in abundance (but only after I passed from denial to anger, to fear and through depression to my current state of acceptance).
the truth is we do not need any new technologies yet undeveloped, new thinking, or new solutions. We only need political will.
And for that we must change the stories we tell ourselves. That’s the real work.
And to do that we have to expose our stories to the hard light of inquiry. In my book, the most important of them all is that “growth is good”.
Let’s all work together because, as dark as things seem, one thing is true; after the disruption, there will still be people living lives filled with laughter and hope and dreams. We can either use what resources we have remaining to assure that is a better and prosperous place or we can squander them in a futile attempt to preserve ‘what was’. And of all our remaining assets the most precious of them all is time.
There’s one last exit on the highway and it is fast approaching.
June 15th, 2007 at 3:12 pm
Dear Sally and Tim,
Wake up calls about our bad destination are good. However, we have to outline the behaviors that avoid that destination. We have to admit conserving, recycling, redistribution of wealth and resources, capping total population and even capping individual consumption would not avoid what you have outlined in your movie.
The solution to the human predicament is rapid population decline (RPD.) I am speaking of declines of half every generation for 300 years.
No one underestimates the magnitude and difficulty of establishing these rates of RPD. No one underestimates how hard it would be to get every couple in on earth (who wants children) to choose only one. However, if you run the number no other set of behaviors accomplish the “good” destination.
I think I have material for your next movie. You can read and even view some of these presentations at www.skil.org. Beyond the technical work on why people have a hard time understanding the meaning of the motions of a system within which they are immersed, there is a presentation of the contagion model to get RPD implemented (see last three op- ed pieces.)
If you like what you see we should talk.
Looking forward to seeing your movie and thank you for trying to put the human condition in perspective.
Jack Alpert
www.skil.org
June 16th, 2007 at 12:52 am
So when am I going to be able to rent the movie from NetFlix and start showing it around to peoples in my neighborhood…I’m disappointed that it is taking so long…I am thinking …you are talking about, it why can’t I buy it. And thanks for all your work on it …Much Aloha…chitta
June 16th, 2007 at 3:56 am
Hi Sally
Wow….powerful post!
Sadly a few commenters here still don’t get it. There is unlikely to be any civilisation. This is NOT a problem for humanity to overcome. It’s a reality “civilised humans” need to face. I guess I could be compassionate and think that they are going through the bargaining process in grief, trying to work out what civilisation could still get away with and keep going…
IMHO, the only way to behave is humility, grief, compassion, building only simple lives and wholesome small communities, as if our local landbases really mattered.
The mass extinction already underway calls us to do this, NOT put out dopeless hope-addicted plans for “rebuilding civilisation”….
So many false hopes, so few are waking up.
Thanks so much for being real and telling truth. I’ll stand with you.
Best wishes, regards
Ted
June 16th, 2007 at 6:46 pm
When and where in Australia can I see this film? I have been interested in peak oil and related issues for several years. I have become pretty depressed with the state of Australian politics as each party wants to rush towards disaster even faster. Both the majors want to sell off as much natural gas as possible to China and India. Both want to ship our minierals out as fast as possible. Both are worshippers of the free market. Both parties have been corrupted by corporate donations. Australian democracy is a wholly owned subsidiary of corporate boardrooms. We have state premiers who talk clean but play dirty. Both want as great as population growth as possible in a land that will have, and is receiving, less rainfall.
June 17th, 2007 at 9:36 pm
Been screaming my head off about peak oil/global warming/the bubble economy/etc to anyone who even LOOKS like they might possibly pay attention for what seems like 10,000 years.
Nothing has worked. No one cares…well…ALMOST no one. Everyone just wants to spend, consume…and breed like rats.
These days (to quote myself) I have gone from “change the world” to “prepare for the inevitable”…it is going to be a time that I fear will make the world of Mad Max look civilized.
I expect you will get some very positive responses from your movie. They will, unfortunately, only be a fraction of what you should probably get.
I would love it if you guys could e-mail me when you’re playing it in Chicago…
I wish you the best.
June 17th, 2007 at 11:50 pm
Hi Sally, I just watched the preview DVD of your movie three days ago. Like a good album of the good ol’ 33 1/3 days, I think I may have to see it several times to see what really moves me and why.
My first reaction is one of relief. To FINALLY see a docu-drama-reality about the confluence of all the long term disasters in our headlights is soberly uplifting.
My experience is a career on Wall Street for 24 years now. I have made a living predicting what will happen in the future and place bets accordingly. About five years ago, I realized the seriousness of our collective problems, and like Tim, started reading everything I could. I went back to school to get my Greenmba, to learn how business’ would have to become better stewards and take into account for the Environment and Society and not just the bottom line.
My wife and I sold our 2nd home, we went totally green and solar, we reduced, reused, recycled and reclaimed our lives off the drip of the whorporate world as much as we could. I stopped owning any stocks that were “bad”, which has greatly impacted my earnings. We even adopted a little baby to help with the overpopulation problems.
And I began to talk and talk and talk….and copy DVD’s of climate change, peak oil, population exponentialism, etc…to all my friends and family. And then I talked somemore. Thats all I cared about at parties. I became known as “Mr. Buzzkill”, because I didn’t feel that we had time anymore to talk about anything but these life changing issues that were heading at us from all directions.
About a year and one half ago, I realized that it just doesn’t matter anymore. It is probably too late and very few people are willing to take the time and energy to really understand what all this means. To really understand what this means to our children and their children. That, as a Society, and a country, we are just too dumbed down, I-podded out and too busy in our daily lives to see the clearcut behind the three rows of trees.
Accepting and believing, living in the “deep grief”, seeing others such as you two, who I have never met, has given me a deep feeling of being not alone. Of knowing that others are “getting it” and thought things are hopeless when dealing with what we are observing, it does not mean that we should not go on shouting, warning, educating and bringing awareness to whomever and wherever we can.
I salute you, I have all the respect for your putting yourself out there in selflessness for the benefit of others other than yourselves. I empathize and relate to your message and your courage.
My only observation and recommendation is to not worry so much about the “echo”. Whether or not people “get it’ is not my worry anymore. I have learned to just keep putting out the truth, the words of awareness and education and though few hear, some will and more are and that has made all the difference.
I look forward to sharing my favorite bottle(s) of wine with you two upon your arrival to SF.. Be safe and keep fighting the good fight. I , for one, would not have it any other way and I refuse to go down without a good fight.
Peace, J.
Sometime last year I realized that in the whole system, big picture, none of this will matter.
June 18th, 2007 at 2:17 am
Sally — You and Tim are lucky to have each other and be in agreement on this subject. Let me tell you what it’s like to be single and trying to deal with being in the internet personals when you are aware of Peak Oil and everything else “What a Way to Go” covers — Susie Q from Main Street America runs the other way. It makes me look like Chicken Little to mention this stuff to a new lady. “Negative attitude”. “Worry wart”. “Survivalist”. Even the dreaded “Conspiracy Theorist”. It’s terrible for your social/love life to know about this stuff when everyone else just wants to have a good time. The slogan from the Life After the Oil Crash website is as good as a turd in the punch bowl: “Deal with reality or reality will deal with you.” NOBODY wants to hear it. Surely there is one good woman in the world (besides Sally, that is) who can handle the truth and is ready to prepare for the future in practical ways.
June 18th, 2007 at 3:01 am
Well, folks, that’s show business!
Make a movie, stump it out there, and hope for the best.
Screw the Progressives, go after the Cultural Creatives market, or barring that, rent a UHaul van and go pick up homeless people. Give them a good meal, for that you should be able to extort a donation from some progressive.
I’ve been cycling “A Crude Awakening: ….” over and over since I got it from Netflix. How about I request Netflix get me your movie? There’s more than one way to skin a hydrocarbon DVD. I use AOL discs for orgone collectors. They work great! Plants love to live a top a stack.
I remember when my friend Robbie Lepzter started his stumping tour for the tax resistor film he made. It was a very professional documentary avoiding any opinion. It questioned our war society. Duh! Flop. Weekend Warriors in SUV’s have military records in their past.
I send love energy to you on your journey with your movie. I’ll buy a DVD and show it to my friends.
Robin Marie Ward
June 18th, 2007 at 1:28 pm
LOVE AND HUGS TO US ALL!!!
June 18th, 2007 at 2:41 pm
Sally, hi. you sound so glum. don’t be. there’s a new movement afoot called democratic cooperative socialism that may be able to get around the old sectarianism and achieve social transformation in the near term. it looks at the cooperatives at Mondragon, Spain and says “that’s what we should have been doing all along!” But, it also sees the need for a new political party based on non-violence, legality and persuasion. so . . . chin up!
June 19th, 2007 at 12:24 am
Dear People,
In order to head off a nuclear war, bring peace, and establish a sustainable yet humane civilization may I suggest:
1. Regional (13) UNs to control all WMD and main force militaries, (to replace the nation state).
2. River and ocean basin political boundaries, in order to move loyalty from the nation state to the local community/county.
3. Community Enterprize to replace Free (Greed) Enterprize. -Rooting all corporations and their subsidiaries in their local counties. -Every county resident a stockholder. -The community gets you started, then you give back to your community. Labor, business, and local government working together as a County Corporation to make their county an economic and social success.
4. Universal faiths, (Sufism, Vedanta, Buddhism), rather than sectarian power grabbing faiths, (Christianity, Islam, Judaism). -Rather than ‘us versus them’, there is only ‘us’. -Unity!
-World peace is not easy to achieve, but we will have no future if we fail.
June 19th, 2007 at 6:20 pm
[…] I had visited the main site several times. A post from last Wednesday (June 14) titled “The Hard Bullet for Progressives to Bite” describes some of Ms. Erickson’s thoughts and emotions as she and director Timothy S. […]
July 4th, 2007 at 2:52 am
I am astounded by your message, for it outlines my feelings of hopelessness. For over 35 years I have tried to carpool, save energy and engage others in the necessity to speak up for the rights of Mother Earth. Almost all for naught, even in the ‘environmental’ community. “Too much trouble”, won’t work, too busy, can’t be bothered-these and other excuses levied with blank stares and often hostility against my pleas for sanity and careful living. The gross and fantastic waste of natural resources (and unnatural ones) is ghastly. The turning of the head from wrongness at every turn, the fear to ‘get involved’; the ignorance and waste when travelling, washing, cleaning and every other human endeavor is beyond belief.
In my home every activity is scrutinized for efficiency and waste. I see some of my 35 year old methods are just now showing up in PG & E bulletins for conservation-yet I can’t get any friends/family to listen.
Recently I have tried to engage local activists in a small movement of conservation, the issue is so blatant and easy to confront it seemed to be a lovely issue to coalesce around. I got in the paper, local talk radio and made waves with local govenment (and contacted state and federal authorities across the nation for this problem is nation wide).
Lacking contact from even ONE member of the local network of ‘hardworking’ activists I even put out a personal appeal for help, suggesting that even though the issue was deserving of more attention maybe one or two others might step forward just to help me, a long time activist who needs support. A few replied-with anger that I had the audacity to challenge their commitment. I never got one offer of help (city of almost 50,000, county of about 200,000 people). Not one…
C’est la vie in this environment of neglect and apathy. Very sad. Your message is so true, breaks my heart. We are lost.
Best to you, never give up.
Pete
July 5th, 2007 at 12:20 pm
You analysis is unfortunately accurate. My wife and I along with a few friends have discovered in our own community, that many progressives are as resistant to facing the future as many conservatives and the mass of the American people.
Between us, we are involved in applying Permaculture design and principles of eco-psychology and eco-therapy to the problem. The solutions exist to fix things and they are not about ethanol and biodiesel and other techno-fixes.
September 25th, 2007 at 5:00 am
Dear Sally,
Just some practical advice:
You guys are nuts, asking for lots of money and limited screening rights BEFORE people see the DVD. You should be practically giving the DVDs away. Build some momentum. The DVD should end with a request for contributions. It should come with a bunch of self-addressed envelopes. The person who bought it should let people borrow it and tell them to send at least $10 in an envelope. People who want to set up a group viewing should request more envelopes. . . or take up a collection and send it all together. Trust people - ask for their help. Be consistent with your message.
Love & Blessings,
Pondurenga
————————————————————-
Anyone who believes exponential growth can
go on forever in a finite world is either a
madman or an economist. - Kenneth Boulding
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October 17th, 2007 at 6:38 pm
Sally,
Thanks for opening up to reveal your actual thoughts and feelings here. I’m so sorry to read some of the reactions, the *prescriptions* posted in the comments. If only people will get on the [pet/pat answer here] bandwagon, we’ll be on the way to better times.
Sitting with bad news, letting it in, not jumping to action and prescription, falling silent for a bit — that approach is so overwhelmingly difficult for most of us. Yet it pays off so richly…
Henry