Author: Diane Drummond

From no place in particular, but perhaps everyplace in general,  I have a certain feeling of unease, a sense that there might be a short time to do SOMETHING, but no clear idea of or opportunity to do whatever it is.  As I listen and observe, it seems that rapid, sometimes upending change is now often the rule rather than the exception.  The illusions of certainty and stability, whatever patterns they took, the familiarity upon which people used to depend, are becoming vaporized, for better or worse.  Yet despite this, the expectations to remain calm and stable, to continue to do such daily things as bringing in income to support oneself and others,  provide for housing, transportation, food, healthcare, and the like remain.  In addition, I do not see that anyone has lost the need for beauty, inward time for reflection, loving relationships, and a certain level of comfort.  The situation feels like riding a surfboard on an increasingly rapid surf.   I wonder if anyone feels this as I do.
Once, in another time of transition, some words popped into my head.  “Do not be afraid,” they said, “of the spaces between existences.  It may feel like you are dying, but you are not.”  I have been thinking of them again.  They are encouraging words,  which seem to suggest that there is calm after the storm, perhaps a calm as beautiful as the gorgeous sunrises that can follow the upheavals caused by major tempests, or the fresh, glowing greenery following a rain.

Many women may recognize a connection between the times of transition and childbirth.  In transition, the energy contracts, pushing one out from the familiar into the unknown.  The rhythmic contractions are spaced far apart at first, then closer and stronger until one emerges from what was familiar and supportive into a new structure or pattern or circumstance.  Certainly, during parts of that process, a woman – and maybe her child – can feel as if they are dying.  Those men who have met challenges bringing them close to the gate of passage from the physical to the ethereal may also find parallels in transition.

I know the key to negotiating a transition is to relax through the process and not resist it.   However, it is human nature to resist the loss of the familiar. Perhaps the familiar will become a part of the new, but the process of transition clouds any certainty of that possibility.  To resist, to become angry with self or others or circumstances simply prolongs the process and increases the discomfort.  It also clouds the perception of opportunities that arise.

The alternative is not giving up or dropping out.  It is the trickier task of relaxing into the situation, letting go of what is lost,  and remaining alert in the present moment.  It is remaining alert, even through discomfort, for opportunities which  may present themselves.  It is remaining relaxed enough to respond appropriately to such opportunities.

I think that to accomplish this there must be faith, faith that whatever may emerge will be good.  For me, that means faith in a higher power that I call God.   Some call it the Universe, the Force, the One, or many other names.  The faith is central; without it one cannot relax, and without relaxing, one actually blocks whatever good may come.

To those of you who, like me, are feeling the energies of transition, my thoughts are with you and I wish you well.  I welcome your prayers in return.

Peace,    Diane

My email this week has been bringing to my attention the various kinds of systemic collapse that could (some say will) occur and the kinds of preparations people are advised to be making.  Much of that information is accompanied by offers to sell items to help a buyer deal with the situations anticipated by the articles.  Sales efforts aside (much of the Internet seems to have become a marketing endeavor), the point of preparing for an uncertain future is valid.

However, the premises behind that point beg further scrutiny.  Yes, change is in the air.  It is an indefinable change, for no-one, not even a talented seer,  can predict with absolute accuracy exactly what changes will occur. Nonetheless, life is change, and the intensity and pace of modern existence would indicate that whatever changes are coming may not be too far distant. We do need to be aware and thinking.  That said, one of the most fragile reasons for making preparations or creating alternative lifestyles is fear. Fear may incite action or sell goods, but fear fails to support the kinds of awareness and attitude needed to create viable responses.  Instead of fearing the collapse of what is familiar and convenient, and has sustained us, we need to focus on lovingly creating a new, sustainable and conscious milieu in which to live.   We need to transcend fear of and anger at the death throes of what no longer works, and, embracing change, become the life that we desire the change to bring. Will that be hard?  Probably, but it is do-able, especially if we think ahead.

There are economists who proclaim that the best investment to make in times of collapse is gold.  Some offer ways to hold onto gold despite governments’ efforts to appropriate all the gold for themselves.  I think that advice is faulty.  One cannot eat gold or wear it.  It cannot provide shelter, and supports no life.  It seems to me that if one wishes to successfully weather a collapse, create a kinder future, and establish a saner way of relating to the Earth and those with whom we share it, the best investment is land.  This is especially true in times of transition.   Land is alive (ask any soil expert), and land is certainly a more reliable support for life than gold.

Land is the basis, the canvas, so to speak, on which to create the emergence from the uncertainty of transition. Community is the engine of that creation.  A discussion of community is another topic; let it be enough that a lone homesteader will find it difficult to do more than barely survive on his wonderful investment.  It takes many hands, be they family, neighbors, tribes, intentional communities, to effectively steward the land sustainably.

If community is the engine to create a mutually healthy plenty on the lane, then skills are the fuel that keep the engine working.  Various skills needed, such as growing food, permaculture, healing and herbal medicine, canning and cooking, midwifery, and others,  are brought in or learned by those who have invested in the land and work together to steward it.

Last are the tools used, the supplies stocked, the gadgets bought, the items that can be lumped together under the generic term of “stuff”, some of which is mostly essential to doing work, some of which is convenient, some of which is of questionable usage.   People tend to love “stuff” and to put this item first.   It is easier to accumulate stuff than to accumulate skill, to attract and develop community and to invest in land.  However, without the first three, the stuff is pretty much useless, and with the first three, much of what falls under the term of “stuff” can be created if it is not there.

Hedge against the future uncertainty, then, but do so with conscious investment.  Land and community are the best investments.  Skills are an important asset, and stuff is variably useful.   Let us hedge intelligently against an uncertain future.  Avoiding fear and the desire to blindly accumulate stuff, let us pay conscious attention to what we wish to create from chaos,  and provide ourselves with the space, collaborators and companions, skills and supplies we need.  Let us use these in peace to create a kinder and more cooperative world.

 

 

Peace,  Diane

A few days ago, I had lunch with a friend who had recently returned from a visit to Cuba.  She and her sister had been housed by a Cuban family for a couple of weeks.   It was fascinating to hear her recount of the visit, especially her description of the resilience of the Cuban people.

In short, when the Cuban economy collapsed in the late 50s, people’s response to the severe shortages and deprivations was remarkable.  When there was little or no food, people learned to grow most of their food.  They also learned to grow much of their (herbal) medicines.  Vintage cars were kept running by whatever means they could devise.  Even more importantly, people drew together into tightly knit communities, helping and encouraging each other.

The conversation left me thinking.  Would we be as resilient if any of a number of completely possible (and some say, probable) events occurred, events which would disrupt the systems by which we currently live?   Two events which might disrupt these systems are an economic collapse and an electric grid collapse.

An economic collapse might arrive, for example, via political means in which the dollar loses its status as the standard currency for international trade, by toppling because of the rising deficit in the national budget, or simply because the United States (as well as other nations) print money at an increasing rate.  Rampant shortages, including food, medicine and fuel, would be only one of the results.

An electric grid collapse could occur, for example, by means of a cyber attack or by means of strong solar flares.   There are many reasons why the system is vulnerable to this, including that the system is almost completely computer controlled, and those controls are by a mix of interwoven systems with various points of vulnerability.  Should an electric grid collapse occur, vast areas of our country – more than just a few states – would be affected, perhaps for years.   Think of what is dependent on the electric grid: air conditioning, heat, cooking, clean water and waste disposal, cell/smart phones, Internet, TV, power for radio, pumping capacity in gas stations, hence our fuel dependent transportation systems, light, refrigeration, to name a few.  It would be like sinking back into the Dark Ages that followed the fall of Rome.

How would each of us respond, both to the conditions themselves, and to the resulting chaos?  Perhaps we need to consider these things, before they or something like them takes us by surprise.  For each of us, the answer may be different, but those answers will reflect the values and priorities we hold.   Resilience is being able to respond to situations in a variety of ways.  What responses do we think we need to be able to activate?  We need to think.

No one can predict exactly what is going to happen.  Yet, most of us can agree that change is in the air.  We need to be ready, and maybe, with adequate awareness, even able to influence it.

Peace,  Diane

 

During my college years, I read two books the content of which has remained with me.  Years later, I saw a film that also left a strong impression.  Those impressions seem relevant in today’s rapidly changing world.  It seems as if what is emerging is a cross between the film, The Matrix,and the books, Brave New World by Huxley and 1984 by Orwell.   Most people have seen or are familiar with The Matrix.  Brave New World and 1984 are well worth reading.  Each is its own reflection of what is, projected into a possible future.

The Matrix foreshadows what can happen as we are drawn, especially our children, further and further into living our lives in Cyberspace.  The Internet is a wonderful tool; however, as we spend more and more time and attention living there, it begins to dominate our lives.  We don’t notice how contact with the natural world diminishes, as we enjoy the images designed to stimulate pleasant emotions and please us as we interact with a device.  Do we realize the threat global warming and our own activities pose to the environment that heretofore has sustained us?  Do we rely on technology to save, nurture and sustain us?  Watch The Matrix again, and pose these questions to yourself.   Is this the direction we want?

Brave New World  posits a new social order, again sustained by technology.  In this world, everything is controlled by an overarching state, one which is itself incapable of change.  People are genetically engineered into caste systems, each designed for a particular kind of work. To achieve this end, children are no longer conceived and borne by women.  Instead, they are conceived in vitro and gestated in specially designed glass jars, in which substances are added to the amniotic fluid to deliberately stunt the intelligence and stature of the embryos destined for the castes designed for manual labor.  The children are raised in nurseries reminiscent of today’s daycare and full-day school systems.  In this new society, to be a mother is the equivalent of being a prostitute in conservative societies of the past.  Committed relationships do not exist.  In order to control the population, children are taught early to engage in intercourse of many kinds with many people, and the population is regularly given feel-good drugs, distributed by the authorities as an act of magnanimity.   Read, and notice the resemblances.  Notice an outcome presented in the book.  Is this the society we want??

1984 gives us the concepts of Big Brother and Doublespeak.  Big Brother has now become common terminology used to describe the various kinds of surveillance to which those in power feel necessary to subject us.  In 1984,  privacy has become non-existent. Outside surveillance has become ubiquitous, and inside, every space contains a screen on which people can watch entertainment and events as we watch TV, but which they are not allowed to evade. Those screens also watch them. If one manages to find a spot not covered by a screen, the police knock on the door.   People’s thoughts are monitored by observing their reactions, and those who do or think anything the authorities do not like are taken to rather unpleasant rehabilitation centers.   Does that begin to resemble what is happening now?

Doublespeak is the practice of emptying words of their familiar and usually understood meanings, and using them to mean whatever the user wants them to mean.  In 1984 it is the government that engages in this practice.  For example,freedom would be used to mean engaging in a life of which society or the government approves.  Concepts are thus redefined to mean whatever is politically correct.   We can see this now, most obviously in advertisement, labeling and politics (e.g., natural is now used to infuse a feel-good response to engineered and processed foods, and has nothing to do with nature;  patriotic means whatever a speech maker wants it to mean).  On a deeper level, the push for gender neutral words that would deny any difference between the genders has begun to erode the concepts of masculinity and femininity.  These two complementary concepts (present in varying degrees of predominance in all people) are now being presented as the same thing, in the name of equality.  Or, the institution of marriage, which has been defined since unremembered time as a union both civil – civil/spiritual AND one from which under normal conditions children may be conceived, born and nurtured.   The meaning of marriage has now been changed by judicial decree to disconnect it from procreation, in order to accommodate those whose unions are not able to produce children.  Could we have done that differently, extended recognition, value and rights under the law to non-procreative unions, using words unique to those relationships?   Yes, we could have, but instead, we redefined marriage, taking from it the gift and responsibility of raising children, and taking it from those who were traditionally defined by it.  The resulting protests, resentments and resistance could have been avoided.

Additionally, children are now regarded as a “right”, one which may be claimed by adoption or surrogacy or other means.    The idea of children as a gift and responsibility, as individual people, is being discouraged.   If one has a right to something, that something is a kind of property.  It is not an individual human being whose best interests must be considered first.  Are our children property?   Is our society becoming semantically engineered?  Is this what we want?

The Matrix,  Brave New World, and 1984 are futuristic tales.   They are not prophecy, not cast in stone.  They do, however, give us an image of the directions in which we are going, and they give us that image in time for us to think of where we want to go.  They give us time to use our faculty of discernment as well as our capacity for emotion.  Using that faculty is a part of accepting the free will with which we are born.

Do read these books, and others, and think.

Peace,  Diane