Western Good Friday is upon us

 

What can we make of this moment in time, we've been here before.

 Although no one alive today can share what it was like, the kind of turbulence we find ourself in is not new.

The Crises of the Third Century

Three Kingdoms

The End of the Han Dynasty 

and many many more examples exist in the historical timeline of the human race on this planet.

Perhaps the unusual aspect of this period we are in now is the connectedness of some kind of awareness of what is happening in various corners of the World in near real time.  The opinions posted, podcasts spoken and "news" reports proffered are as usual, a mix of truthfulness, misdirection, misunderstanding and/or outright deceit.  Often with aims to dehumanize, evoke nationalistic fervor and sew the seeds of internal strife. You have to figure that part out using your big brain. But that is the most salient awareness you need to bring to your mind in these days.  All of the divisive rhetoric reduces the power of the populace by fractionalizing what we think are important ideas.

We as a people tend to place short term survival ahead of long term wisdom. So fear, anxiety and anger are well known buttons to push to motivate human behaviors that make a small number of opportunists everywhere powerful and wealthy. Even Nicolo Machiavelli knew emotion spreads faster than reflection and Goebbels proved narratives are perceived as true when repeated enough times. But here is the interesting thing... today we communicate like never before. Add a good dose of discernment and we may very well have an impactful and positive result.

Part of rising above all the noise requires one to be realistic, search for the truth as best as you can discern it. That means being a passive listener will only render you a confused useful idiot. LOL, IMHO.

Recognize power is concentrated, but responsibility is diffused - by design. Any system or structure tends to project rules, and we like that.  Unfortunately even if they violate our moral or ethical imperatives.  Have a look at the Milgram Experiment.  Few of us have been tested and know what mettle we are made of. Those who have, have learned how remorseless, manipulative and compassionless certain evil people really are. It's a very small percentage of our population, but these people exist everywhere. 

Don't assume the "us vs them" narrative is a meaningful  point of view.  It is a classical way to splinter groups and get them to fear or hate each other.  Red v Blue, Lib v Con, etc., etc... dead end.

Finally, as a citizen of the planet, any one of us has limited agency - but as a bloc we have tremendous ability to correct our errors.  

Take all of this and fold it into today's changing dynamics where governments and their influential groups are the policy brokers. Public opinion does have an important influential role but it first needs to be formed upon the reality of the situation and the collegial union of the many to make their voices heard. Thus flooding the zone with garbage propaganda prevents that coalescence.  That's where discernment and compassion matter. If left to its own devices - any government decides action, special influencers shape and incentivize the implementation to the advantage of their small circle of confidants - and unless you participate, the general population just gets pressured, persuaded and pulled along.  

So what attributes should we appreciate.  Well how about pausing before reacting... Expanding the "we" not the "them".  Reward accuracy in content, appreciate and actually take the time to understand multiple perspectives.  Understand the agenda certain voices bring to the forum.  You may have to do a little work to gain that knowledge.  

As we look to the future, a World that makes conquest increasingly an unacceptable cost to society would be a big step in the right direction. So would reducing the fear narratives in all of their manifestations. Somehow we need to evolve a limit on unchecked power, align our mutual economic interests with available energy, resource limitations and peaceful intent. We need to make aggression unprofitable, despicable and those who promote it should have sound reasons for what should be an unusual and rare position...

So this lofty goal will take time to achieve. Remember progress has never been a straight line, and that the current tensions although terrible also expose and identify particular weaknesses in our current systems. At the moment fear is being exploited and it is winning, division is being amplified and global systems seem to be reacting - not evolving - a lack of discernment all the way around IMHO.

But look around you, awareness of gross manipulation is very apparent, the germ of an idea that we are more alike than different is abetted by our communicative social medias. We stand at a cross roads in time. Energy is a big factor behind the chaos, but realization, collegial behavior and compassion are very strong forces and most of us have them.  Can we rise above the old ways and forge a better future?  We must try, and we must succeed.  

What about just you and your family?

 Continuing on this idea of "What can you do?" I wanted to leave you with a scaled down system for just a small family - two adults and two kids.  This might be helpful in helping you to frame the dimensions of the task of a sustainable life.

Let's first start by assuming 2 acres per person is a safe buffer size.  So you will need to acquire 8 acres of decent land, ideally a mix of cleared crop land and a 2 or 3 acre forest that can be managed to provide 4 cords of wood per year.  A property like this in the midwest of the US costs anywhere from $20K to $80K depending on things like out buildings on site, existing wells, fenced lots or just good quality land etc. By the way I used to heat a home almost entirely with wood and can attest to the 4 cord number. Just like in the larger plan you will need to dig a well and build rain catchment if not purchased with the land.  

Four people consuming 2500 calories per day means that you'll have to pick a variety of crops to yield about 3.5 M calories per year.  That can be achieved with a 1 acre garden for greens and a 5 acre farmed plot for your staple crops.  Those would be things like potatoes, grains, beans, squash, corn, wheat and a few chickens could make up the basis.  Just like in the 100 person think piece, a planting strategy and a crop rotation map obviously need to be figured out. Each of these staple crops yields a caloric and nutritional value.  You'll have to decide how you want to derive healthy results.  You may want to add things like cabbage for vitamin D. Fruit trees can be added but take years to produce.  Got maple trees? - there's your maple syrup.  Create a few bee hives, there's your honey!  

You still need dry storage, and you need to know how to can, dry, smoke or otherwise preserve wild game or fish you may acquire.  On a small independent endeavor you probably want to avoid livestock of any size as they drive a need for hay, need cover in some circumstances and generally add a lot to the work load. 

Electricity by nearby small hydro is best, wind chargers next or lastly, solar are real options with simple battery storage. You will have to get used to living with less electronic gadgetry but that's probably a good thing. Maybe consider buying a few oil lamps for the evening... They give a small amount of heat and with a reflector provide a warm light perfect for reading.

Realistically, a small project like this can comfortably provide 80 - 90% of your food with smart storage allowing you to amass a years worth of food stuff in storage.  This was pretty common on pre industrial age pioneer settlements.  

This is really pretty attainable, and depending on your goals near 80% food independence is pretty easy to accomplish.  If you work in the existing economy - sort of a hybrid lifestyle - Just about anybody can make this happen. 

My last post on  "what can you do".  Hope it inspires you!

Cheers!

Lets' take a serious look... PART 3

 Our village is an idea at this point.  We seek to take 100 people out of the modern world with all of its pluses and minuses and build this independent community.  Let's do this in a number steps over some realistic time period.

The founding step would be to assemble the like minded core group of founders.  Maybe ten or twenty very committed people,  Settle on a timeline and evolve expectations that all can agree on, then go shopping for some land. Within the first year strive to get storage, water supplies and rudimentary housing in place. This is a building year, so much attention will be put into education, first attempts at farming the first 20 acres and storing the most basic foods for preservation.  Only a few live on site, and the village is dependent on outside resources during this time. 20 acres under cultivation.

As time goes on and crop planting is scaled up a majority of the community will now be able to locate on site. Perhaps half of the community now live on site by year 4.  The other half may be working outside of the community.  Crop production and housing are priorities. 100 acres under cultivation.

By now some livestock are in production, a system is evolving to manage a woodlot to furnish 3 or 4 cords of wood per family each year.  Rainfall catchments assist the irrigation of crops.  The goal for full village occupancy would be something like a years worth of stored food,  and a years worth of stored energy.  

By year 6 the wells, streams, and catchment should be able to provide 5 gallons/day for people, add in animals, washing etc and the need grows to 6-7000 gallons a day for the whole village.  So water treatment and purification as well as colocation to a reliable clean water source is a fundamental location factor. 120 acres under cultivation and full caloric production is achieved with storage goals met.  All 100 villagers live on site.

So what does this cost to get off the ground?  For our 100 person village, basic housing $2M USD, water system $120K USD,  electric solutions with batteries $250K, another $259K for tools, equipment for mini tractors and implements, and $120K for storage facilities.  So start up costs that will need to be sunk in by say, year 3 to enable progress by year 5 or 6 is around $4M USD levied among the 100 villagers.  That's $40K per person.  Land cost is highly variable but consider something like $750K USD for 200 acres.  

In succeeding years crop rotation plans need to get implemented. The planting calendar is now reaching steady state.  Acre by acre planting plans need to be established, along with the crop rotation map.  Your village is in tune with the earth now and not very dependent on any external resources.

After the complete transition in about year 6, continuous improvements will strengthen the future of the village.  By this time 90% of the food consumed is produced in the village. Population is stable and soil amendments have increased yields naturally - organically.  

So talk to your friends, think about how such a concept of community could exist by just working together. Maybe an incremental approach works better for you and your group.  Here's the thing - these 3 posts are just a roll up your sleeves and THINK of what needs to happen for a 100 people to live a sustaining life in a moderate climate.  Use those system simulation tools in new ways, what if somebody in your group owns a 50 acre hobby farm, how could a small group collaborate to lessen dependency on outside resources given the considerations I mentioned?  Be inspired to imagine how some other grouping might work well for you.  Maybe your goal is for everyone to live right where they are and only achieve food independence... A completely different set of inputs.  Build the models, take a look!  

A key take-away is cooperation among committed people if you commit to action.  Once a strategy is formed, no matter what you do, strong designs and disciplined execution are needed because this is hard work.  

That's all for now. there will be no PART4, just my hope that these think pieces will inspire you to take a look beyond the platitudes and think about how we can actually benefit from collaborating.  

Let's take a serious look... PART 2

 Hopefully you have played around with creating a systems model. There are several open source (free) solvers out there and this mechanism allows you to look at outcomes with various input changes.  

So how do we size the critical components required?  Lets start with some assumptions like, 2500 calories a day for each person, about 900,000 calories per year.  This can be achieved with 3 acres of land per person if a mixed diet of grains and livestock.  So for a 100 person village, that is a land need of 200 acres which if detailed contains the crops, a pasture, housing, forest for wood and hunting, and wells.

This property could be subdivided into areas that are primary spaces for: housing, greenhouses, livestock shelters like chicken coops, orchards and apiary, stable crops like wheat, corn, beans and potatos (you may have very different crops depending on where you live. Another area considered to be managed forest which would provide firewood, foraging and hunting opportunity. What ever is left should be your biodiversity reserve for pollinators, birds and other wild life.

Let's make an attempt to design this property. In your planning an allocation strategy must be agreed upon so chaos is kept to a minimum.  Let's start with dividing up those 200 acres with 15 acres alloted for housing, cooking common areas and repair shops. 20 acres for a vegetable garden, 80 acres for the staple crops like grains, beans and potatoes. You will need a pasture for livestock - another 50 acres. Set aside 15 acres for orchards. The remainder for forest management for wood needed for heating, cooking and a hunting zone.  

Energy could be provided by solar panels for electricity, wood for heating and cooking and wind chargers, maybe hydro if you have a stream.  

You will need to diversify your food system.  Core crops will be your high calorie staple foods, things like potatoes, corn, wheat and beans.  Nutritionally you will need leafy greens, fruits and nuts.

Complementary livestock benefits from animals like chickens are eggs, protein and pest control, cows can give milk, beef and cheese. even goats can be useful for milk and land clearing.  So the animals are part of the system and may have several functions.

Finally all of this work will yield a bountiful harvest which requires some place to store the yield. Here preservation can be achieved with below ground "root" cellars, canning, fermentation, drying grains and beans. All necessary to survive a winter.

Now lets turn our attention to labor.  A village of 100 people might break down to something like this: 50 people involved in food production, 10 more keeping the infrastructure maintained.  Another 10 involved in healthcare and eduction, 10 more in food storage and processing.  That leaves 20 to cover governance, logistics, and back up redundancy.

Governance might look like a voted in council to make resource allocation decisions, conflict resolution and rule enforcement.  Done right, cultural cohesion can be achieved.

Next time we'll spend some time pondering how do we make this happen. 

Let's take a serious look at what you can do... PART 1

 So we all know something isn't right.  If you do just a little research you can learn that critical minerals and energy depletion are obvious outcomes of consumption at a high rate by a large population on a planet with finite resources.  You can also read about warnings from the early 1900's, the 1950's and the many simulations done in the 1970's that all tried to make society aware that there are hard limits to growth - often messaged in proxy statements designed to destroy demand (a whole range of nudges from birth control to fleet fuel consumption guidelines and just let your mind wander - there were many more).  

So how can you start to model your environment and see what might be possible with a small grouping of people and nothing more than land, water, sunlight. reasonable soil quality and healthy biodiversity. Let's consider these natural resource inputs to our open source model.

What about human inputs? Well, labor from healthy individuals is needed, knowledge of agriculture, how to administer medical treatment, how to go about food preservation and storage, and some mechanical ability (build and repair stuff)

Next, the system model will need a starting sink of cash and materials to enable agricultural inputs like a stock of heirloom seeds, and/or some livestock and buffer stocks of feed, a starting assortment of farming tools and modest equipment (this is not a large operation but a sustaining village).  Another input would be soil amendments like manure and compost, lastly some quantity of water from a well or stream for irrigation and storage.

People need to live somewhere so infrastructure has inputs to the system model too. Housing of some kind in needed, energy sources like wind, hydro, wood, peat etc., storage buildings for grain, root cellars for cool storage or over winter keeping, maybe refrigeration if energy is not a pressure point. A way to get around, maybe by bikes, golf carts, or horses. Lastly waste needs to be managed properly and thoughtfully.

Another input must be a decided way to exchange stuff.  Barter, or work to a schedule of time for each person then share etc.  This is where a valued material like silver might come in.  

Going deeper wherever you live you have climatic realities that encourage seasonal planting and crops that grow well, perhaps your crops could be exchanged with the community 50 or 100 miles away that grow other things...  You will also need to know how to mill grain, ferment, can, dry or smoke various products for storage so those are subjects somebody in the community needs to document, understand and lead in teaching. 

The model probably needs some external inputs too. Stuff like replacing worn out metal tools, replacement parts, replenishment of medicines, and perhaps a religious leader.

Constraints would be your climate growing season with all of its components like growing season length, amount of rain, days of sun, energy availability, storage capacity for harvested crops, available land acreage and some population set-point of this village.

That should be enough to get your brains started!  Next we'll have a look at some reality checks on caloric intake and other benchmarks needed to meet to be successful.  

Reflecting on where we are...

 

I just returned from a conference and noticed this plaque.

These are turbulent times, many changes based upon the awakening recognition of what it means to have finite reserves while operating in an economic system predicated on growth in order to fulfill monetary promises. This old rubric is clashing with resource and energy grabs gift wrapped with religious themes and decorated with exploitations of cultural factions. The rubber is finally hitting the road, as the predictions published in the 1972 Limits to Growth slowly demand action. What better way to get yours "while the gettings good" then to have the casual observers confused and shaped into a combative narrative with their neighbor. Don't look for truth or logic in these narratives, you will only find spin, smoke and mirrors.  Obviously the problem is those people over there...  Look for something much bigger my friends. "Those people over there" are pretty much like the people over here!   None of them voted on the debacles we keep on walking into.  What does that tell you?  

Buckle up, it will seem to many that the world has gone crazy.  Not at all, the powerful and influential who use governments as part of their bought and paid for mechanisms to get what they want are posturing to protect their dominions in an age of degrowth. PS, they don't all agree and scarcity makes them very nervous, greedy and grumpy. 

Business as usual is finally changing and rapidly - it had to.  Competing ideas for how to keep their power and exert control are swirling around the think tanks with gaming scenarios burning up the MWatts at the data centers... I don't think "share and share alike" is part of the strategy. Apparently Richard Edward or Daniel Defoe aren't big with the top-hat and monocle crowd.   

This community survival/adaptation problem is a fertile research area for a group of good systems engineers.  I think back to my childhood where contact with the big government was non-existent, local farms produced most of what was in the market and a stay at a hospital cost about what a stay at a good hotel was.  Complexity removed from everything, pesticides etc., grant money too - what would the inputs and sustainable population be and in what environmental boundary conditions would need to be evolved for a local community to be happy and healthy?  I'm sure there is no funding for this type of research, but it would be life saving, pioneering and society changing if comprehensive analysis were done and published.  Any takers out there? An educated return to the 1800's with only the technology that adds value to life - not to some corporate portfolio.  Open source simulations of system models could also help many people with diverse ideas explore this topology as well and contribute to many dynamic models that would succeed.  

I wish for peace, happiness and health for all.