I’ve actually made a lot of mistakes, and seemly continue to do so, and probably will until I’m very dead.

The specific mistake I’m referring to is teenager-esqe arrogance. Somehow it carried through until just very recently.

I don’t have the answers… I never did. I have a few ideas of what could be cool, and might work, but answers? The Truth?

Nope.

Education is a bitch. If you’re really learning, it’s a continual process of revelations of ignorance. Every bit of new information shames your long-held, uneducated beliefs. By the end, you get to that point where you can barely move, unable to speak, as the level of you unknowledge is fathomless. People come to you for answers, and all you can do is say, “I… I don’t know.”

If you want a career, you have to back up that with “But, here’s some cool ideas that might work.” You swallow the shame of your ignorant opinion, taking some solace in that fact that no one else seems to know, either.

I’ve recently discovered that civilization itself is unsustainable, and taking it down is the key to establishing real, true and lasting sustainability for humanity and the planet. But that’s all I know, and I’m not even sure that’s the entire picture. I don’t have alternatives, just “someday” ideals that could come to pass. I don’t know how to save people and stop the destruction of the planet. I don’t even know how to save myself and the people I love without going to jail or worse.

I’ve taken the entire weight of the world upon my shoulders, and I know that’s not enough. There’s so much more to this than I’ve discovered in this short period of education. I cannot shift, like so many others, to some idea of salvation, some simplistic fix-all solution that is entirely out of my hands. Everywhere I look people are giving up, because they can’t handle the decent, the revelation of the terrible truths and the fact that we all, every one of us, are all individually responsible for it, and are equally responsible for changing things.

I decided, long ago, that I wouldn’t take the well-traveled path. I knew then, as I know now, that it’s not going to be easy. So far it’s been hell. But god damn, I couldn’t live any other way. How could I just live a normal, shrugging as we kill the planet and each other, saying things like “it’ll all work out” and “everything will be fine” while perpetuating the problem?

I’ve recently been confronting mortality. We’re all going to die someday. It’s coming for me, and whether I have 100 more second, days or years, the final result will be the same. I can either look after myself, play it safe, not rock the boat, or I can get something done. I can do things most people are unwilling to do, because that’s who I am. I’m crazy. I’m a warrior. I have bones and muscles, breath and sight, and I can do something.

But what can I do?

I don’t know.

My first book, The Sharp Knife of Forced Simplicity, Volume 1: The Numinous Rebellion was published almost exactly three years ago.

I’ve learned a lot in that time. I’ve learned how the publication process works – at least with a certain business model of publishing. I learned what it feels like to see your name attached to words, on a bookshelf in a stranger’s house. I’ve learned about the overwhelming importance of proper and thorough editing. I’ve learned how hard it is to get honest feedback from friends, and I’ve learned that there’s nothing more disappointing than a lukewarm reception. I’ve learned that, obviously, views change through the years. I’ve learned that inspiration comes in shades. I’ve learned that actually researching a subject before you write a book about it is probably a good idea - ignorance is obvious to those already in the know.

That last point is something I feel like I should apologize for. I don’t want to spend my life re-inventing the wheel. My arrogance has been tempered (somewhat) by the revelation that my most exciting personal revelations are nothing new – their exploration and development as been going on for some time now. I can contribute more by knowing what has come before, and building on that.

I can’t fault my youthful impetuousness, and I can’t regret actually getting it done. The lessons learned from the experience more than make up for the debt I incurred to publish (and am still paying off on my credit card).

In effect, I feel like the book has served its purpose. A tool, in the right time and place, to make things happen. But like any tool that’s no longer needed, it has become dead weight – it takes up space, and I’m constantly moving it around, trying to find a spot for it. I’m better off, for now, without it.

I’ve removed the links to the Amazon page as well as the download page. I’ll be contacting my publisher and seeing how I can settle our account.

Sometime in the future (maybe sooner than later!) I’ll be able to post a revised edition for free download. It’ll be nice to have it as a point of reference, and for the random friend who decides to read it, it’ll still be there… hopefully with a proper editing this time!

[This paper isn't due until Monday - I finished it Thursday night. Enjoy!]

Executive Summary: Impediments to Establishing Global Sustainability

Ron Khare

The purpose of this paper is to identify and clearly explain the single largest challenge to the establishment of global sustainability.

Our working definition of “global sustainability” is the perpetuity of natural resources. The definition of “civilization” is ever-increasingly complex urbanization. This is distinctly different from “community,” with which it is often confused.

Summary

The only real factor that prevents global sustainability is civilization, or more specifically, the cities upon which civilization is based. Civilization’s basic structure is exploitative, destructive and unsustainable. The continued rise of civilization is the only true source of the destruction in the natural world. No amount of topical solutions will fix its fundamental need, which is to take, by any means necessary, the resources it cannot provide for itself.

Primary Threat: Civilization Itself

Civilization is marked as the shift of mankind from nature to city. As far as human pursuits are concerned, this may be for the best – higher concentrations of people and access to the benefits from the resulting greater division of labor have led to some amazing advances of arts and sciences.

Cities, by design, have one deadly flaw – they cannot support their dense populations with the resources contained within them. In order to survive, then, resources (like food) must be brought in from their surroundings.

Historically, the resource base for a city was strictly limited to what could be walked in by carts or by beasts of burden. The needs of these cities were fewer and simpler – food, primarily, followed by raw resources to be used by craftsmen.

This may seem innocuous at first, but the system of violence, imperialism and oppression is already firmly established in this model. The city relies entirely upon the ability of farmers to farm significantly more than they themselves need, and then expend the energy necessary to transport those heavy, time-sensitive goods to a city center. What follows is a list of the inherit problems with this system.

Resource Redistribution and Loss

In a sustainable agricultural model, most (if not all) of the nutrients in the soil stay on-site, and are eventually re-incorporated into the soil. The nutrients that cannot be recaptured can be replaced by drawing on established wild areas – leaf litter from forests, for example.

Pushing the lands to their limit for exportation to the city destabilizes the soil. The nutrients leave the farm in the form of produce, only later to be discarded by the city-dwellers in the trash or down a sewer system – never to return to the farm. This one-way flow of nutrients means the farmer becomes increasingly reliant on external fertilization means – the farmer becomes a threat, in turn, to the wild areas as his need to replenish the soil increases.

Soil is just one example of the problem with city consumption – any and all natural resources are subject to this one-way flow. The cities take these natural resources and produce ever-increasingly sophisticated and specialized items for human needs – or may lead to better knowledge, science and art. In any case, the resources themselves are never returned to the land from which they came.

The Rise of Civilization is the Death of Nature

Cities, by their nature, are unsustainable – although it is possible that a small city working with the people who live on the nearby land can last for a very long time. However, a successful city (by the common understanding of success) will become increasingly sophisticated, efficient and, in all likelihood, grow.

The city lifestyle is removed from natural processes, even while understanding of those processes may increase from higher learning and observation. Cities are lit up at night, creating an unnatural daytime effects. Roads and sewers are built to efficiently funnel traffic and sewage to predetermined locations. Soil is covered with stones or concrete. Waterways are straightened, and rainwater is flushed away. Views are obstructed by large buildings and walls. Sounds and smells are all of human origin. Animals are either slaughtered for food, domesticated as pets, or killed as pests. Vegetation, if it is allowed, is contained and cultivated for aesthetic properties. City gardens are typically herb gardens or small supplemental plots. As a city expands and increases in infrastructure and sophistication, it further removes those living therein from the natural world. At the same time, it continues to put increasing demands on the surrounding “wild” resources – and those who gather from or farm them.

Eventually, the needs of the city exceeds the yield limit of the immediate land. While it is possible that the city could take efforts to reduce its population, this is almost never the case. Instead, the answer has always been to reach father out, gathering resources from most distant lands.

It may be that those nearby farmers may have some sort of allegiance to the city based on economic or defensive purposes that could justify the loss of their resources. The farther you travel from the city, however, the harder it is to offer benefits that offset that loss. When the city realizes it must have those resources in order to survive and prosper, all too often the answer has been to take them by force.

There is no logical reason that someone living off of a piece of land should voluntarily create a one-way stream of resources off that land. Either those living on the land must be indoctrinated with an established set of illogical principles that support resource exploitation, or those resources must be taken by force. Either way, those living on the land that has city-valued resources is on the losing end of the deal – true sustainability precludes the perpetual exportation of resources.

Symptoms are Not Causes

Every threat to civilization Lester R. Brown mentions in his book Plan B 4.0 is symptomatic of an underlying planetary disease. The problems with climate change, war, water usage, agriculture, energy generation, transportation, peak oil, over-population, failing states and the like are merely the result of a firmly established “civilized” mindset. Resource extraction has advanced to the stage where many people can no longer live on their land – half of the world’s population have followed the flow of their resources to the cities. (source)

Civilization has had a few thousand years to perfect its justification for existence, downplay or re-word resource extraction, and so far remove people from nature that many people today believe that our only hope for sustainability is in the further development and refinement of civilization itself. One-way resource extraction and the exploitation necessary to continue that flow will abate, people say, if we can advance civilization just a little bit more.

Yet, in all the thousands of years that mankind has been developing cities, there has never been a satisfactory way to resolve the fundamental issue: too many people on too little land to support them. There is no guarantee that, if techno-idealist visions of “eco-cities” are realized (making even the largest mega-cities fully self-sufficient) that humanity will abandon the long-entrenched goals and values of civilization itself.

More importantly, even if every symptom of civilization was solved through the application of miraculous new technology, the disease of civilization will only continue to grow. New resources will be found vital to further development, leading once again to extraction, exploitation and scarcity, resulting in more advanced problems in sustainability that we’ve yet to fathom.

[unedited. enjoy.]

[As an aside, I'm also reading Derrick Jensen's book "Endgame, Volume 1: The Problem with Civilization" - the main thrust of which is that civilization itself is unsustainable and will end, probably sooner than later, and that we should be actively dismantling it.]

Reading: The Efficiency Dilemma (which you can read HERE!)

The better (more efficient) we are at doing something industrial (using coal power, increasing miles-per=gallon), the more we end up doing it. That is, rather than see an overall decrease of gasoline consumption due to more efficient motors, we see a net increase in fuel consumption – more people driving more hours. The more electricity we can squeeze out of coal, the more plants we build, the more power we use.

Here's a picture of Jimmy Carter, for some reason.

There’s just one small neuron that makes this link happen in the brain. Just one tiny bit of information – the better we are, the more we are – is the turning point for the rest of society and civilization. You’re heard me repeat the adage: “If you’re driving to Mexico and you actually want to go to Canada, just slowing down won’t actually help.” That is, if we need to become a sustainable society, simply minimizing non-sustainability won’t actually help – at the very best, you’ve just postponed utter destruction for a while. Where we need to go is in the exact opposite direction, and the only way we’re going to get there is by stopping entirely, turning around, and going the other way.

With the addition of the Jeavons Paradox, we see the worst of it: by simply slowing down, we actually speed our trip up. By conserving fuel, we can drive longer and get more cars on the road, increasing this mass migration to Mexico while Canada slips farther and farther away.

What do you think?

To me, it says one thing: An unsustainable system cannot be retrofitted to sustainability. The very system itself must become something completely different. Anyone who totes themselves as a “green” or “environmentalist” or anything like that, and is all in favor of increasing the efficiency of our current systems needs to stop, read this article, and think very seriously about the wisdom of making a bad machine better at what it does.

In the meantime, the only author I’ve read who actually understands the repercussions of what I’ve just said is Derrick Jensen, and even he stops short of instigating the full-scale revolution that’s needed.

Ah… will I, when that day comes?

ok, actually two:

Soangela, hard at work.

I just made up that team name – I think we have a different one, but I can’t remember what it is offhand.

We’re making strong progress on our project!

- Our plans and designs have been approved.

- We have gathered and are in the process of assembling the frame for our panel structure.

We should be done with our frame within the week, weather permitting.

Left to do:

- Refurbish the panels (clean glass, re-insulate, fix housing)

- Check/fix plumbing, install panel pipes.

- Check and streamline wiring.

As long as we stay on track, we should be finished well before the end of the block. We plan on using our remaining time to tackle the energy flow systems in the Student Lounge. This includes a diagram explaining how our solar hot water collector works, but also addresses issues like earth-plastering the walls, making the kitchen more accessible (and re-using the hot air from it back into the Lounge), and so on. These are, obviously, only to be tackled once our primary project is completed.

The obscure we always see sooner or later; the obvious always seems to take a little longer. – Edward R. Murrow

I’m rather fortunate – a few days before the block started, a friend had picked some some sustainability-themed books at a local second-hand store and gave them to me. Among them was Natural Capitalism, which I think I should read from front to back soon.

While some fundamental assumptions about our civilization’s basic structure and momentum (specifically, their need for complete overhaul) aren’t addressed (at least, not in these readings), taken in their own light they are, again, head-to-desk obvious. Really, knowing these things, and then seeing how the mass of humanity continues to stumble about in such gross and offensive inefficiency would drive anyone borderline mad, and make you wonder if mankind’s truest curse is his own stupidity.

However, the authors don’t seem to apply a completely holistic systems-thinking in their approach. They stop their systems at the building itself, in relation to roads and parks surrounding it… one or two more layers should bring that system into completion – with the planet itself, and all life living upon it.

Indeed, as Joel Kovel mightily suggests in his book The Enemy of Nature: The End of Capitalism or the End of the World, the very foundations of our societal structure may be the largest destructive (i.e. inefficient) element in any design process. And while, yes, we do need to live in super-insulated homes and use 90% less energy to do everything, those basic capitalistic drives towards more and more seem unaddressed – encouraged, even, by the “gained” energy in those ultra-efficient designs.

So I’ll read this book, at some point, and I’ll come to a more complete conclusion - I’ll also have to read The Enemy of Nature and see if I’ve done it justice. In the meantime, no matter where you are, the basic elements presented in this book make a lot of sense and should be embraced.

http://professorlonniegamble.com/uploads/Main/EfficientBeautifulLovins.pdf

I think I’m suppose to get into detail about my impressions of this reading – but all it really did was make me slam my fist on the desk and shout “YES! OF COURSE!”

Then I get frustrated that things haven’t advanced as far as they should have.

Then I re-commit myself to this direction in life.

Then I get tired and head to bed.

 [We apparently have to have a talent show for our Permaculture class. Being rather talentless, I was somewhat inspired to write a poem (in a poor imitation of Blake). I don't write poems often (or at all), and again, this is obviously the first draft of a rough idea... but here ya go!]

Machinated man-made wretched wasteland wrestled my weary mind
and turned my awkward feet towards freedom’s golden lands
heavy, old, unfortunate man-made-man I came to find
no freedom’s land left to find, only dunes of golden sands

Distraught and downtrodden I sat my ass upon a rock
and asked the bright burning solar light above,
‘Where may man find relief for his flock
and enter in God’s sheltering love?’

Sun came down, hard and heated
and spoke not, nor cared
but by degrees my skin beaded
and I to more agreeable company dared

I climbed a sheer cliff face
where cold stones reached the sky
where wild wooly Winds raced
and, unchecked, should cause me to fly

‘Winds,’ I asked, while tears began to streaming,
‘to where should we now turn our heart?
What comfort’s home now opens to being?’
The winds raced on, on and nothing to impart.

Bruised and bleeding, no less in spirit
I came across a tiny cave in a shaded nook
the way dark, I decided not to fear it
and tumbled in, the world forsook.

Cool, not cold, the darkness embraced
the ground soft and supportive
the sheltering cave my spirit encased
and gave me relief from my motive

Enjoying some well-deserved shut-eye
I awoke in a start, surprised by the time
and found myself embraced by
something serpentine

The snake, not fat by fortune’s grace
thin and black and keen and dread
was no less long than a mile’s pace
and held me wrapped from foot to head

‘Sir,’ said I through strangled lips, ‘you’ve much imposed
the length of your body, it holds mine still.
If this is your cave in which I dozed
I throw myself on your goodwill.’

‘If it pleases you to let me go
though my trespass should warrant death
then I alone shall know
that a serpent’s love is best.’

The snake raised it’s skinny head
its eyes dark in the low light cave
its tongue flickering as it said
‘Stupid human, but brave.’

‘Tell me then, I must know,
by who’s love is your measure?
Tell me how you came here below
it would give me some pleasure.’

‘Certainly,’ said I, and began to recall
man’s cruel wasteland, beset by vulture’s stare
the Sun’s indifferent fireball
and the Wind’s callous air

My story seemed to sway the snake
a tear ran down a scaly cheek
and he said ‘Yes, my heart aches
for the world of man is bleak.’

He stood for a time, thinking
and presently loosened his hold
and composed himself, unblinking
among his many folds

‘Mankind cursed snakes,’ said he
‘For some original sin, I guess,
and forever after we are forced to flee
or face our eternal rest.’

‘If some serpent caused the fall,
to which your Jesus paid the price
why live you in wastelands all
and not regain Earthly paradise?’

‘We would’ said I, ‘if we knew the ways,
but at every step we seem to falter
we pray and pray for better days
but our knees bloody upon the alter.’

‘Then let this serpent make amends
for our previous transgressions!’
So saying, the snake took many bends
and made ready his mind’s possessions

Opening his mouth he began to hiss
and sway and swing and dance
and sang a song just like this
which held me in a trance.

‘Contrary to human belief
and may it be of some relief

that man’s greatest effort made
comes from a soil spade

misaligned he pulls apart
what was once nature’s art

but nature’s wisdom now allures
to bring together what occurs

and in sacred wildness find
the truth for all mankind

that a man must break his back
when he his functions forget to stack

and all of nature’s promenade
comes to him, ready-made

and all he has to do is bask
in the sunlight, simply ask

‘What, I wonder, is nature’s plan?’
and in finding answers, simple man

does not push, nor pull
nor take away from nature’s rule

but let’s God own design win
observe, step back, give a grin

for all your work is already done
be smart, design well and have your fun

Permaculture is the key
to mankind’s immortality.’

Thus sang the serpentine snake
slithering along the floor
his simple words put my mind to bake
as he gently showed me the door

Again outside, against the dew
the sun rose up out over yonder hills
my outlook changed, perceptions new
my body shook in wondrous thrills

unfettered, unshackled, fluid and sly
up those steep stone steps skipping
I sang my serpent song to the sky
and danced among the wild wind’s whipping

the hot golden sands I turned to run
between the boulders and dust so fine
I sang my serpent song to the Sun
and soaked in strong, sensuous shine

machinated man-made made ready my early arrival
mind at ease, awkward feet no longer stumbling
I carried with me now Nature’s Bible
and the force of tectonic rumbling

There’s a deeper power in all of this
much more than plants and maps
unending planetary justice
bringing greed to its collapse

Be joyful, friends, but please be wary
bear the serpent’s song in mind
the darkness is not ours to carry
so in wisdom’s light do shine.