Peak Oil Blues Blog

Parameters for Coaching for Collapse

What would you do if you only had a year to do it?

The answer to that question has a lot to do with your current situation, your values, goals and objectives, your life-cycle phase, your economic situation, your race/ethnicity, your country-of-origin as well as your current nation, and the social class you grew up in.

The biggest question I get in my coaching people who are facing into the dramatic cultural change is “What should I do next?” Rather than trying to answer this in a generic form here, I thought I would walk you through some of the questions that sit with me as I speak to people over the telephone about their worries, fears, and concerns about what’s coming and how they should be preparing for it.

Type I, II, and III Errors
Type I (“false alarm”) error can be summarized by believing we are observing a difference when, in fact, we aren’t. Type II (“missing the change”) error occurs when a researcher misses a change that has happened, believing none occurs. With Type III error is when you’ve asked the wrong question, so whatever answer you get isn’t relevant.

Most people who contact me are deeply concerned that they will commit the “false alarm” Type I error, and will take unnecessary action to prepare for a collapse that won’t happen. We can consider this a “lost opportunity” to enjoy life, rather than sink time and energy into pursuits we wouldn’t otherwise devote energy to. On the other hand, what if they live like the ‘grasshopper,’ loving the weather, and find out that winter, is indeed, fast approaching? What if they’ve “missed the signs” that they should be preparing, but aren’t (Type II)? Finally, there are those who call me, upset, anxious, or heartbroken over attempting to make a decision which is, (at least in my opinion) a distraction, a ‘red herring,’ or otherwise keeping them from looking at the truly important stuff they need to start paying attention to. In other words, even if they answer the question correctly, it will bring them no closer to understanding themselves or in which direction they should be heading (Type III).

The Examination
We all live in a context, and that context is usually a great deal more complicated than we might otherwise suspect. We are not only impacted by our current family constellation, but we are influenced by past ‘family-of-origin,’ “FOO” (parents, grandparents, great-grandparents) influences. This is a disquieting finding for a great many people. We often embrace the notion of “free will” and are disturbed to find that we are pushing for a divorce at the exact same age as those in previous generations. Or we are shocked to find out that the ‘oldest son of the oldest son of the oldest son’ repeatedly married the youngest daughter of the youngest daughter of the youngest daughter. Or that we’re rebelled against joining a profession that was pushed upon us, just as our father and grandfather did.

Sometimes the connections are obvious, such as twins Dear Abby and Ann Landers who married on the same day and took identical jobs. At other times, we are shocked to learn that patterns have jumped several generations, but repeated just the same, as when a mother, who was upset to find that her 15 year old was pregnant, was told for the very first time, that she, herself was the product of an unwed 15 year old.

We cannot destroy our history. They live on inside of us, perhaps more so when we attempt to bury and distance ourselves from their impact. In fact, as therapists, we are as interested in what is NOT said, as what is. We find that attempts to cover up family history intensifies their affects on others born sometimes generations later. The faster and father away we attempt to run from our families, emotionally or physically, the more they appear to trap us, rather than free us from their clutches. “We ourselves” to quote Jorge Luis Borges, “are the embodied continuance of those who did not live into our time. And others will be and are our immortality on earth.”

Death
Death does not even free us. In fact, sometimes the impact of those who have died early or in tragic ways, are even more impactful than those who have lived on into old age. Suicide continues to haunt those who live on as a family legacy. In an effort to keep his wife’s suicide a secret, Henry Fonda went onstage as usual the night of her death. Jane Fonda found out the details of the death six months later in a movie magazine. Shortly after, Henry remarried and during his father’s honeymoon, son Peter “accidentally” shot himself in the stomach.

Fusions and cutoffs, triangles and conflicts, distortions in communication patterns, the symptom bearer or ‘black sheep,’ or the outstanding ‘family success,’ family fortunes gained and lost, all play a role in shaping how we see ourselves in our current environment. I look for saints and villains; those that are hated and those that are beloved; the people for whom family legends are repeated often and those whose names are never mentioned. I want to know about those that excelled in school and those who never attended.

Embracing Dominant Values
According to Hines, Preto, McGoldrick, Almeida and Weltman (1999): “Americans tend to move closer to the dominant American value system as they move up in class.” P. 69 Social class is impacted by such things as race and ethnicity, religion, politics, geography, and the length of time a group has been in this country. Those who have benefited the most by the ‘status quo’ are going to find it exceedingly difficult to believe that what’s ‘normal’ is likely to change dramatically.

On the other hand, those who have experienced discrimination and acknowledge this without ambivalence are more likely to see no ‘rose-colored’ charm in business as usual. Marginalized, impoverished, hated groups or individuals who are blamed, are often more than willing to embrace dramatic change as a hoped-for ‘break’ from their current status.

Family Life Stages
The notion of what constitutes a “family” varies by group. For WASPs, “family” means “nuclear family,” while Italians may refer to the entire extended family group as “family.” Southern Anglo Americans may consider family to reach back to those who took part in the Civil War, while African Americans tend to focus on a wide informal network of kin and community, extending beyond blood ties, into close long-term friends and neighbors. Chinese include all ancestors and descendents in defining family, although women have traditionally moved into their husband’s family, leaving their own legacy to be ignored in the family tree.

Before one can carefully understand one’s stage of life, we have to understand how this period fits into the ethnic web of the FOO. How do children become adult? After a religious ritual? When they reach 18? Move away? Become self-supporting? Marry? Become parents? For some, one only reaches adulthood when they become the oldest generation. How is the transition to parenthood understood? What are children’s role in the family? How much power are they expected to exercise? What type of decision-making are they invited to assume? What are the gender roles and which have been rejected by whom? What does “respecting parental authority” mean in this family? Who makes up ‘community’ and what are their roles and responsibilities? At what stages or during what crisis does a family need help and what type of help is most appropriate? Does the older generation give to the entire family or just to the grandchildren? What are the impacts of situational crisis (loss of job, home, life) on the individual family members sense of self-worth, entitlements, or gender roles? Can adult daughters return home or only sons? Are spouses ever considered “family members” or do they remain family interlopers? Are elders revered or seen as burdens? Are family traditions or tradition itself embraced or rejected?

Before we can begin to contextualize what an economic, environmental or energy crash means to those who seek our help, we have to understand the person in context, and understand how changes will impact them.

Hines, P., Preto, N., McGoldrick, M., Almeida, R., and Weltman, S. (1999). Culture and the family life cycle. In B. Carter and M. McGoldrick’s (Eds). The expanded family life cycle. Needham, MA: Allyn & Bacon.

The Tyranny of Positive Thinking

Abstract:
Could it be that “thinking positively” is contributing to our blindness and inaction around energy issues, environmental degradation and economic devastation? I’ve hammered this point home in a number of posts, the most widely read being “Do You Have a Panglossian Disorder?.” Now, a trenchant social observer provides a clear outline of how that may well be so, elaborating on the ‘dangers of positive thinking.’

“Americans are “positive” people.”
So goes the first line of Barbara Ehrenreich’s most recent book “Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America”

(Metropolitan Books, 2009). This book points out the dark side of optimism. While Americans have crafted and embraced “happiness” ideology, arguing that a positive outlook can lengthen lives and improve health, Ehrenreich examines this “research” and finds its evidence flimsy and motivated more by financial success than scholarly rigor. What function does the evolution of “positive ideology” play in a nation that, even in prosperous times, ranks 23rd in self-reported worldwide happiness? Why do we embrace the ‘happy face’ while swallowing two-thirds of the global market’s supply of antidepressants, making them the most widely prescribed drug in the United States? Are we depressed because we aren’t happy or does the constant demand for happiness lead to depression? To address these questions, the author begins by defining her terms:

Elements of Positive Thinking
While we American citizens believe that an optimistic “can do” attitude is part of our national character, Ehrenreich concludes that being “positive” and maintaining a “positive outlook” is an ideological mandate. She defines “positive thinking” as having two elements:

“One is the generic content of positive thinking—that is, the positive thought itself—which can be summarized as: Things are pretty good right now, at least if you are willing to see silver linings, make lemonade out of lemons, etc., and things are going to get a whole lot better.” While often confused with hope, optimism is a cognitive stance, a conscious expectation, which presumably anyone can develop through practice, while hope is an emotion, a yearning, and not entirely within our control.

The second meaning of “positive thinking” is the practice, or discipline of trying to think in a positive way. The author points out that researchers on positive thinking aren’t content to argue that positive thoughts lead to happy feelings. Why isn’t it enough to simply “feel happy?” No, the act of “accentuating the positive” must actually lead to happy outcomes. Optimism promises to improve health, heighten personal efficacy, boost confidence, and intensify resilience, making it easier for us to accomplish our goals. If you expect things to get better, the argument goes, they will.

While psychologists have attempted to prove this is so, through research, a far less rational theory also runs rampant in American ideology—the idea that our thoughts can, in some mysterious way, directly affect the physical world. Negative thoughts somehow produce negative outcomes, while positive thoughts realize themselves in the form of health, prosperity, and success. The explanations may vary, but the message is the same: whether by “reading the relevant books, attending seminars and speeches that offer the appropriate training or just doing the solitary work of concentrating on desired outcomes—a better job, an attractive mate, or world peace” can be ours if we put the effort into learning how to think positively.

A History of Positive Thinking and Modern Links to Consumer Capitalism
Ehrenreich traces the history of positive thinking, from the mavericks that inspired Mary Baker Eddy onto modern day ‘mega-church’ preachers. Dale Carnegie published the first great text on how to act in a positive way in his book “How to Win Friends and Influence People, published in 1936, and still in print. Born “Carnagey” he changed his name to “Carnegie,” apparently to match that of the industrialist Andrew Carnegie.

Carnegie’s book did not assume that his readers would feel happy if they took his advice, but that they could manipulate others to their own advantage by putting on a successful happy act. It was no accident that books like “How to Win Friends” and Napoleon Hill’s book, “Think and Grow Rich” were written and heavily promoted during the last Great Depression, because there was a lot of propaganda about the importance of having a “positive attitude,” a “pleasing personality.” The “right attitude” could overcome the massive structural and economic problems the USA was facing. Then, like now, what’s now thought of as “consumer confidence” would pull the country out of its morass once people “believed” that “prosperity was right around the corner.” We now call the anticipation of this prosperity “green shoots.”

While the early “positive thinkers” were reacting to the harsh judgementalism of Calvinist thought about sin and damnation, modern day “positive thought police” maintain many of these same rigid features. Ehrenreich still sees the preservation of Calvinism’s more “toxic features—the same harsh judgmentalism, echoing the old religion’s condemnation of sin, and an insistence on the constant interior labor of self-examination.

The American alternative to Calvinism was not to be hedonism or even just an emphasis on emotional spontaneity. To achieve positive thinking, emotions must remain suspect, and one’s inner life subject to relentless monitoring. While the Calvinist searched for signs of laxness, sin and self-indulgence…the positive thinker is ever on the lookout for “negative thoughts” charged with anxiety or doubt.” Such efforts are, according to Ehrenreich, “a form of ‘secular salvation.’”

It is no surprise that “think and grow rich” should blend the notion of positive thought with the accumulation of material wealth. Hundreds of self-help books since the start of positive thinking have talked about how the right thoughts can “attract” money. They’ve also framed practical problems such as world-wide unemployment, low wages, or medical bills as “excuses.” If you can free your mind of the “real” obstacle to wealth—such as the harboring subconscious revulsion for “filthy lucre” or deep resentment/jealousy of the rich, you can have it all. It is not social class or larger institutional structures that limit the average person’s success but “negative self-talk” that impede your progress toward wealth accumulation.

Consumer capitalism is, according to Ehrenreich, “congenial to positive thinking.” It promises that we deserve more, and can have it, if we really want it, and if we are only willing to make the effort to get it. While she agrees that the notion of perpetual growth is absurd, a belief in positive thinking makes ‘having it all’ seem, “possible, if not ordained.” p.8. Think –the right way–and growing rich is yours.

Play-Acting Happiness to Happiness as a Predisposition
Happy shoppers, according to Les Slater, spend up to 20% more, and therefore one avenue to making customer’s happy is to have happy salespeople.

During the last Great Depression, workers were expected to ‘fake it ‘til they make it.’ Today, it is no longer enough to simply act happy. Employers now expect their workers to be happy. A reader of Ehrenreich’s work wrote to her about her experience working at a call center for Home Depot:

“I worked there for about a month when my boss pulled me into a small room and told me I “obviously wasn’t happy enough to be there.” Sure, I was sleep deprived from working five other jobs to pay for private health insurance that topped $300 a month and student loans that kicked in at $410 a month, but I can’t recall saying anything to anyone outside the line of “I’m happy to have a job.” Plus, I didn’t realize anyone had to be happy to work in a call center. My friend…refers to [simulating happiness] as the kind of feeling you might get from getting a hand job when your soul is dying.” p. 54.

Happiness: From State to Trait

“You can’t hire someone who can make sandwiches and teach them to be happy,” says Jay, “So we hire happy people and teach them to make sandwiches.”

“GET RID OF NEGATIVE PEOPLE IN YOUR LIFE. Negative People SUCK! Avoid them at all cost. If you have to cut ties with people you’ve known for a long time because they’re actually a negative drain on you, then so be it. Trust me, you’re better off without them…”

The message is clear: go with the flow, or prepare to be ostracized or fired.”

Read this advice from a ‘management expert:’

“We knew what to do about increasing sales and cutting losses, but the morale problem had us stumped. We decided we really didn’t know what “morale” meant, or why the employees seemed down in the dumps. In true Machiavellian fashion, we had made the needed personnel cuts early and all at once. The deadwood was gone. The people remaining were the survivors, in for the long haul. They knew that. They should have been happy they still had jobs. Not everyone was unhappy, though. There was a solid core group of people who were up-beat and supportive. … [so] we decided to watch those positive, upbeat individuals more closely to see if we could get a handle on what made them that way.
After a couple of weeks… the answer hit us: The individuals in our upbeat group were just plain happy people, on or off the job. They had stable, fulfilling family lives, they had interests outside of work, they were confident in their abilities. Ups and downs were a part of their lives too, but in general they liked themselves. It was just that simple. [W]e had a disproportionately large share of basically unhappy people who were dragging the company down. Morale, being a group dynamic, was low because of all those unhappy people…Our solution was to hire happy people…
The [previous research study’s] assumption was that morale is determined by the conditions of the workplace–the “work environment” The reports of such studies routinely and dutifully concluded with suggestions to employers about what they could change in the workplace to increase the general level of job satisfaction. Implicit in such admonitions was, first of all, that job satisfaction actually needed changing, and second, that making the specified changes would indeed have the effect of raising morale. We now have reason to believe that, for any given person, job satisfaction is …accounted for by what is in, as opposed to what is around, the person.”(emphasis added)

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In other words, people are not made happy by decent working conditions, fair wages, or good benefits. Happy people are hired. Happy people are happy regardless of how miserable their jobs are, and as early as the teen years, “cheerful” adolescents, as rated by their guidance counselors, have job satisfaction 30 years later, regardless of their type of work.

The message is clear: ‘hire the happy’ and rid your company (and your life) of “negative people.”

But what about that “downer” auto executive who questions the company’s overinvestment in SUV’s and trucks? Or that worry-wart financial officer who says the bank is overexposed in subprime mortgages? Get rid of them! In a world of positive thinking, “if you cannot bring good news than don’t bring any.” Reality checks or negative predictions of any kind become evidence that someone is ‘unwilling’ to be nourishing, full of praise, or affirming and therefore is a downer and must go.

The Business of Being Happy
Clearly if the reader walks away with one unfaltering message from Ehrenreich’s book, it is that positive thinking is big business. After laying off “deadwood,” most large companies are still faced with the task of shaping the thoughts of its remaining workers in a positive direction. In 1994, the same day that AT&T announced it would lay off fifteen thousand workers, it sent its San Francisco staff to a big-tent motivational lecture by Zig Ziglar who told the crowd:

“It’s your own fault, don’t blame the system; don’t blame the boss—work harder and pray more” p. 115.

Businesses were willing to pay big bucks to the “power of positive thinking professionals” who promised to emotionally prepare the remaining workers who were facing increased pay cuts, fewer benefits, longer work hours, heightened work loads, and decreasing job security. Corporations could boost a book to the best-seller list by purchasing tens of thousands of copies to be distributed to their remaining workforce.

This “happiness” industry produces an “endless flow” of books, DVDs, and other products and provides corporate employers with tens of thousands of “life coaches,” “executive coaches,” and motivational speakers” as well as the cadre of psychology profession willing to train them.

Quantum Flapdoodle
Positive thinking had now become so ubiquitous and virtually unchallenged, that it became the stuff of runaway best sellers like the 2006 book The Secret. What’s the secret? It has an unmistakable resemblance to traditional folk magic—that like attract like. Like a fetish or a talisman, the ‘thought’ brings about some desired outcome. But no one in this industry would be happy to be linked with the word “magic.” They prefer to link their efforts to “real” science such as quantum physics. In Bright-sided, Ehrenreich goes on to list a series of assertions about how this “scientific” principle works; theories Nobel physicist Murray Gell-Mann calls “quantum flapdoodle.”

Happiness Academy
Fortunately, for this industry, the lure of lucre has motivated even the crabby halls of mainstream academia, to entered the fray, with courses in “positive psychology” designed to help students “pump up their optimism and nurture their positive feelings”–no doubt as an antidote to their soon-to-be-faced dismal job prospects and inescapable student loan debts.

Ehrenreich is perhaps, particularly hard on my own profession, psychology, because she sees it as having sold out true research in favor of fad and fashion. Arguing that while insurance companies have gutted incomes for clinical psychologists, the corporate role of “positive thought coach” and “trainer” offers a new avenue to financial stability.

She quotes from a 2007 article in the New York Times, describing the course “Happiness 101.” It has “the sect-like feel of positive psychology” and suggests that “the publicity about the field has gotten ahead of the science, which may be no good [science] anyway.” “Poor science” worries its leading advocate, Martin Seligman, also, according to this same article: “I have the same worry they do,” states Seligman. “That’s what I do at 4 in the morning.”

Ehenreich continues her brutal critique:

“At a late afternoon plenary session on “The Future of Positive Psychology,” featuring the patriarchs of the discipline, Martin Seligman and Ed Diener, Seligman got the audience’s attention by starting off with the statement “I’ve decided my theory of positive psychology is completely wrong.” Why? Because it’s about happiness, which is “scientifically unwieldy.” Somehow, this problem could be corrected by throwing in the notions of “success” and “accomplishment”—which I couldn’t help noting would put the positive psychologists on the same terrain as Norman Vincent Peale and any number of success gurus.”

Seligman suggested a new name, –“positive social science” capturing a ‘plural theory’ embracing anthropology, political science, and economics,” but this statement “created understandable consternation within the audience of several hundred positive psychologists, graduate students and coaches.” Changing the name was a mistake, argued Diener, because “positive psychology is a brand.” Besides, he argued, he ‘hates’ the idea of ‘positive social science,’ since social science includes sociology and sociology is “weak” and notoriously underfunded.”

The gathering agreed that despite the fact that the science wasn’t “keeping up with the applied work like coaching,” it was “meeting a need.” “Application,” it was argued, “sometimes gets ahead of science, and science later follows.” Despite the weak research supporting the field, ‘people want happiness’ argued Seligman and Diener (and apparently ‘positive thinking psychologists want income…)

While attempting to differentiate themselves from the motivational industry, Ehrenreich argues that “positive psychologists” are still attempting to corner a market in the corporate world. “The subject [positive psychology] she argues ‘seemed to have veered away from science to naked opportunism…When one audience member proposed renaming positive psychology “applied behavioral economics,” because “it’s popular in business schools and goes with high salaries,” nobody laughed.”

Thinking Your Way to Health
Positive Thinking as the new American theology is also now a ‘medical prescription’ for life-threatening illness. It reframes what is life-threatening, as a “gift,” that clarifies priorities, strengthens family ties and heightens spiritual connection. What a positive way of framing a disease that has a lifetime prevalence of 1 in every 2 men (killing 1 in 4) and 1 in every 3 women (killing 1 in 5).

As a result of treating her own breast cancer, Ehrenreich became intimately familiar with a culture that “had little tolerance for the expression of anger, discussion of environmental causes, or the fact that much of the immediate illness and pain was induced by the treatment.” She quotes Cindy Cherry in an article published in the Washington post who stated:

“If I had it to do over, would I want breast cancer? Absolutely. I’m not the same person I was, and I’m glad I’m not…”

“Cheerfulness is required, dissent a kind of treason” p. 31. “Never a complaint about lost time, shattered sexual confidence, or the long-term weakening of the arms caused by lymph nodes dissection and radiation. What does not destroy you, to paraphrase Nietzsche, makes you a spunkier, more evolved sort of person.” “If that’s not enough to make you want to go out and get an injection of live cancer cells..[another cancer survivor insists] “

Cancer will lead you to God. Let me say it again. Cancer is your connection to the Divine” p. 28-29.

Positive thinking in cancer support groups were once thought to lead participants to cure, but this previous compelling evidence no longer stands up to scrutiny. In May 2007, in an issue of Psychology Bulletin, James Coyne and two coauthors systematically reviewed all the literature on the supposed effects of psychotherapy on cancer and found it full of “endemic problems.” A few months later, David Spiegel, an early researcher on support groups and cancer survival rates, reported in the journal Cancer that support groups conferred no survival advantages after all. “It might improve ones mood, but they did nothing to overcome cancer.” There are emotional and social benefits “but they should not seek such experiences solely on the expectation that they are extending their lives” p. 37.

Nevertheless the bias favoring a link between emotions and cancer survival persists. When asked why, Coyne believed that it was because cancer-related grants to behavioral scientists were riding on it. Skeptics, like himself, tended to be marginalized. “It’s much easier for me to get speaking gigs in Europe” he told Ehrenreich.

With regards to her own struggles with breast cancer, happening a decade before writing this book, Ehrenreich reflects:

“What [cancer] gave me, if you want to call this a “gift,” was a very personal, agonizing encounter with an ideological force in American culture that I had not been aware of before—one that encourages us to deny reality, submit cheerfully to misfortune, and blame ourselves for our fate.”

“He didn’t like pessimism, hand-wringing or doubt.”
Some would argue that political and business leaders set the tone for what attitudes and beliefs are acceptable to hold. Among American Presidents, while it has always been “Morning in America,” this mantra reached a “manic crescendo” of optimism at the turn of the twenty-first century initiated by Bill Clinton, and later George W. Bush who “took his presidency as an opportunity to inspire confidence, dispel doubt and pump up the national spirit of self-congratulation.” For George W., the key adjective was “optimistic,” and this demand for positive thinking shaped his advisers profoundly. According to Condoleezza Rice “the president almost demanded optimism. He didn’t like pessimism, hand-wringing or doubt.”

Bosses Drank the Kool-Aid
This same “Yes we can!” attitude led to delusional optimism and a demand for “bright thinking” on the part of bankers and a large part of the investment industry. After demanding that their work force digest positive thinking, the CEO’s themselves “drank the Kool-Aid,” with disastrous economic consequences. The image of a CEO changed from being a capable administrator to a leader—a motivating, flamboyant leader”—very much like a motivational speaker, in fact. Many business leaders, “developed a monomaniacal conviction that there is one right way of doing things, and believe they possess an almost divine insight into reality…they are charismatic visionaries rather than people in suits.” “Corporations are full of mystics,” a 1996 business self-help book declared. “If you want to find a genuine mystic, you are more likely to find one in a boardroom than in a monastery or cathedral” p. 112.

Both on a political and corporate level, this “reckless optimism” pervaded every aspect of American life, from the invasion of Iraq, to the mortgage and banking industry, as well as the delusional capacity to “dismiss disturbing news” about the levees breaking in New Orleans. While the tragedy of September 11 was blamed on a “failure of imagination,” Ehrenreich argues that there was, instead, plenty of imagination, but the type that imagined “an invulnerable nation and an ever-booming economy—there was simply no ability or inclination to image the worst.”

Avoiding the Misery
What’s the best trick to staying happy according to Happiness Gurus: don’t read or watch the news. Why is the news such a bummer? According to one theorist:

“The great majority of the population of this world does not live life from the space of a positive attitude. In fact, I believe the majority of the population of this world lives from a place of pain, and that people who live from pain only know how to spread more negativity and pain. For me, this explains many of the atrocities of our world and the reason why we are bombarded with negativity all the time.” p. 58-59

Starvation. It’s a bummer, man.

Ehrenreich argues that this fear of taking in bad news stems from a deep believe in one’s own helplessness, which she believes is at the core of this positive thinking: “It causes you sadness and you can’t do anything about it.”

Giving the Universe a Boost of Optimism
If things are truly always getting better, if we live in the best of all possible worlds and if the arc of the universe slants toward happiness and abundance, why are we required to put forth the effort to maintain a positive outlook? Because, apparently, we don’t believe that the universe can truly function on its own without our help. And this egocentric perspective leads us to believe that we are, truly, the center of the universe, G-d’s ‘special creatures’ and that therefore the universe, and the little planet we operate from, will remain a forever giving ‘Mother Earth,’ because of our positive thinking.

When we are confronted with so much contradictory evidence like the polar ice caps won’t stay frozen “because we say so,” or oil depletion continues unabated, our anxiety demands that we pump up our thinking. We run for the help of therapy, workshops, tapes and self-help books, given by the preachers, gurus and seminar leaders more skilled than we at “self-hypnosis,” “mind control,” and “thought control” who can instruct us. How else can we hope to maintain the constant effort required to repress or block out so many “unpleasant possibilities” and “negative” thoughts?

“Those who are truly self-confident, or those who have in some way made their peace with the world and their destiny within it, do not need to expend effort censoring or otherwise controlling their thoughts” she argues. “It has become an American obsession because we are a terribly insecure nation.”

Massive Empathy Deficit
And just as “purely positive thinking” can allow us to deny the environmental, economic, and energy calamity happening all around us, it encourages us to reject and distance from the very same people who are most likely to call our attention to the plight that befalls us.

“Negative people have to go, even, presumably, the ones that you live with: “Identify the situation or person who is a downer in your life. Remove yourself from that situation or association. If it’s family, choose to be around them less.”

Keep away from victims and “Debbie Downers!” Their fate will become yours, as if by magic, should you allow yourself to be influenced by them.

Those that cannot help but be impacted to the core by deep fears of rain forests destroyed, species extinctions, or the dramatic impact of a fossil fuel-free future feel the depression and despair. They panic or are filled with immobilizing anxiety. They refuse or are unable to “put on a happy face” and their sensitivity is rewarded by job rejection for not being optimistic.

By logical extension, why should we tolerate the “whiny toddler, the colicky infant, or the sullen teenager?” How could we put up with the depression of our unemployed husbands or the chronic pain vocalized by our dying parent? Rather than promote tolerance of the challenge, present in any family or group, to empathetically read and respond to the moods and messages of others, “accommodate to their insights and offer comfort when needed,” we are told to dump them and seek out the winners. Instead of becoming more closely connected to our bodies and to our emotions, we face the stress and emotional depletion when forced to remain ever cheerful and insensitive to the environment that surrounds us.

This is a horrible message for a difficult time.

But perhaps Ehrenreich gets at the heart of the matter when she says that:

“If the power of the mind were truly “infinite,” one would not have to eliminate negative people from one’s life; one could, for example, simply choose to interpret their behavior in a positive way—maybe he’s criticizing me for my own good, maybe she’s being sullen because she likes me so much and I haven’t been attentive, and so on. The advice you must change your environment—for example, by eliminating negative people and the news—in an admission that there may in fact be a “real world” out there that is utterly unaffected by our wishes. In the face of this terrifying possibility, the only “positive” response is to withdraw into one’s own carefully constructed world of constant approval and affirmation, nice news, and smiling people” p. 59.

And so, as we achieve success at positive thinking, achieved through discipline, we tolerate no possibility for planetary collapse, job loss, energy depletion or business failure that we cannot control. Refuse to let in such negative thinking, or the failure will be your fault. You are the world, and your thoughts require you to take full personal responsibility and to exert the necessary power of will to not allow the possibility of failure. If you should fail, only the “whiners” or the “losers” are disappointed, resentful, or downcast.

“Winners” make cancer a gift and a dead ocean a “unique opportunity.”

She ends her introduction stating her wish for:

“more smiles, more laughter, more hugs, more happiness and better yet, joy…but we cannot levitate ourselves into that blessed condition by wishing it. We need to brace ourselves for a struggle against terrifying obstacles, both of our own making and imposed by the natural world. And the first step is to recover from the mass delusion that is positive thinking….Why should one be so inwardly preoccupied at all? Why not reach out to others in love and solidarity or peer into the natural world for some glimmer of understanding?…Why spend so much time working on oneself when there is so much real work to be done?”

Thank you, Barbara, for being MY Peak Shrink.

Some Thoughts on the Psychology of Community: Part II

Gossip
As a kid, I knew that one of my father’s friends was a cheapskate. The cheapskate, at a social function, didn’t buy drinks at the table until later in the evening, when all of the “women” had stopped drinking alcohol. He’d “disappear” when it was time to order another round. I vowed, at the tender age of 8, never to marry a cheapskate, because I never wanted my husband to be talked about so disparagingly. (Please take note this was the time when “Mad Men” notions of gender roles ruled.) The cheapskate was, in social biological terms, a “free rider.” More here.

My father was not merely ‘gossiping.’ He was providing his children with a social education. Free-riders are the target of ridicule and develop a poor reputation. Eventually, everyone in your community will know you as a ‘free rider’ and will be hesitant to help you or share freely with you and yours. As the community’s resources become increasingly scarce, free riding will become increasingly endangered as a survival strategy.

Gossip, often disparaged as a form of communication, is an essential avenue for determining reciprocity and transmitting information about another’s reputation.

Women, the keepers of community relationships, are often accused of being the “gossips.” Few people willingly volunteer to be the target of public ridicule, so gossip shapes social behavior, discourages free riding, and encourages reciprocity in smaller communities and “pay it forward” attitudes in larger ones.

People internally have a sense of fairness, and few want to be found coming up short as stingy or a free rider. The person who keeps showing up at the pot luck empty-handed, or the person who stuffs three large doggie bags on the way out, eventually becomes a target of gossip, even more so if they carry around a sense of “entitlement.”

Gossip, instead of being a ‘bad’ thing, is essential to community networking, and creates a set of checks and balances between people within a community. It is the avenue through which one develops a “reputation,” either good or bad.

“Nasty gossip” is one which only intends to destroy someone’s reputation, without offering any obvious community benefit. When we hear nasty gossip we may think: “Why are you saying that? That’s none of your business!” but what we really mean is “That’s none of MY business!” Nasty gossip that is harsh and unfair, or blatantly untrue, tends to harm the reputation of the gossiper.

On the other hand, when your sibling calls you to say “Call your mother, she’s upset at you because you forgot her birthday!” this info is immediately useful to us in repairing familial relationships.

Are those without Health Insurance Free-Riders?
Last night, I heard on NPR’s Marketplace, a discussion of the health care provision that would require every person to carry health insurance. Those who don’t pay for health insurance, the argument went, are, in effect, free-riders, who increase the cost of health care for the rest of us.

However, these “free riders” were not only the young, who believed that they were healthy and so therefore could spend this income elsewhere, but also those who had recently lost their jobs. Are you a free rider if you are unable to pay the high premiums? No, few view the situation that way. In addition, few people in this country view health insurers as acting on behalf of the public good, but instead see them as the “Snidely Whiplash” character who shouts “Pay the rent!s” and drive widows and orphans from their homes. Individual mandates are viewed as benefiting not the larger community, but instead are exploitative costs that benefit a handful of elites.

Lying vs. Bullshit
This NPR “Marketplace” piece is a perfect example of what Harry Frankfurt would call “bullshit” as opposed to lying. Bullshit completely disregards the truth in favor of media spin, impression management, and the like.

For the bullshitter, … all bets are off: he is neither on the side of the true nor on the side of the false. His eye is not on the facts at all, as the eyes of the honest man and of the liar are, except insofar as they may pertain to his interest in getting away with what he says. He does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose.”
(pp. 55-56)

In Frankfurt’s view, bullshit is worse than lying, because “the liar considers the truth, insofar as to avoid it, whereas the bullshitter is indifferent to the truth in favor of a particular agenda.” In a culture full of bullshitters, “news reporters” claim to seek “truth” but this gets lost on a grand scale. “Investigating” is replaced with “advocating” or appeasing advertisers. What is left out of the conversation becomes more important to the act of disregarding the truth than what is spun as information. When we consensually agree that an individual or the mainstream media spins nothing but “bullshit,” we tend to disregard them altogether, unlike the liar, where we might at least determine some minor parameter, of the truth, by assuming the reverse could be true or that the lie is somewhat related.

Sharing Time

In the 1970s Americans entertained people in their homes 14-15 times a year, a little over once a month. In the late 1990s that number had dropped to eight times a year, a decline of 45% in less than two decades.” Alone, Suburban, and Sorted

Another essential element of community is sharing time together. Trusting someone happens over time and through engagement in mutually meaningful work. If you only know someone in a ‘social’ context, you don’t know them very well at all. But increasingly, fewer Americans are even spending social time together.

Socializing, particularly with people who we have little in common with except geography, requires a toleration of differences and emotional intelligence. Hopkins can refuse the dinner invitation of his neighbors because he’s too tired or too busy, as long as he returns the gesture somewhere down the line. This could be done in a variety of ways, such as returning the invitation at some later date, delivering a small gift or card acknowledging his appreciation for being invited, or calling a week later to thank them again and requesting that he be thought of the next time. Few people continue to invite those who’ve refused them repeatedly, or those who never show any indication of reciprocity.

Reciprocity
When one attends dinners, it is customary to hold a dinner in return. As Sharon Astyk has said, it isn’t a matter of ‘keeping up with the Joneses’ with gourmet delights. That doesn’t matter a wit. If you don’t return the invitation to the people who first invited you, they will think you didn’t have a good time, or didn’t like them (ask me how I know.) So developing community requires the commitment of time and energy, and the social graces to figure out what is expected of you and to fulfill that expectation.

Bridging and the Community

Communities with lots of bridging relationships, filled with norms of good will, cooperation and reciprocity, have more social capital than communities fractured into small gated communities with norms of cynicism, unhelpfulness and distrust toward one’s neighbors. Dr. Richard Beck

If you live in a community where you feel a “them and us” mentality, the place may be lacking avenues for more casual and cooperative social and civic contact. Greer spoke about the loss of Fellowships, but the same can be said for Granges, PTA participation, bowling leagues, religious participation and the like. As trust deteriorates, people form connections with people who share narrower and narrower perspectives about the world. This is a danger of Transition Towns if the central underlying premise of getting together is that those who attend must accept the premise of Peak Oil or Climate Change.

Cynicism heightens in a “them and us” social world. It is harder to argue with the premise that “we are neighbors so we have common interests based on geography.”

The Busy Stay Busy Getting Stuff Done
People demonstrate their trustworthiness when we rely on them to do something, and they then do it well. If someone is never called upon, it is hard to know how trustworthy they actually are. Being the life of the party only goes so far, unless their contribution is outstanding. The phrase “if you want something done, ask a busy person” speaks to the fact that those who are busy have repeatedly demonstrated their capacity to perform for the public good. The 80/20 rule applies here—20% of the people do 80% of the community work. If you want to be involved in your community, and you don’t have time to be one of those 20%, be their friend and assistant. You’ll know who these people are when you ask around, because you will hear their names mentioned again and again in many different community activities. You may need to forgive their personality flaws, perhaps their “controlling nature,” but that becomes easier when you understand the extent of their good works.

Emotional Intelligence and Social Graces
According to Wikipedia, “social graces are skills used to interact politely in social situations. They include manners, etiquette (the specific accepted rules within a culture for the application of universal manners), deportment and fashion. These skills were once taught to young women at a finishing school or charm school. The focus of social graces has changed over the last century, recently with an emphasis on business etiquette and international protocol.” They also were taught by parents. Greer respects the Masonic Lodge he’s joined and so dons a tie, as is expected of him. The Lodge demands this show of respect and he demonstrates his respect by complying. We’ll ‘clean up’ and ‘look presentable’ at the funeral of a beloved relative, if we respond to the social expectations of the situation. We’ll bring meals to the bereaved without asking “Do you want me to cook something for you?” If our cooking is horrid, we’ll arrange for meals to be dropped off by those more skilled in the culinary arts, until the bereaved cries “Stop!” We’ll do the same for those with new babies, broken limbs, horrible flues and the like. True social graces allow those being helped to believe that they do us a great honor by allowing us to help them in their time of need. And it is true, they do.

Sometimes, the internal pressures to conform socially even overtake the most rebellious of us. There is a scene in the movie “Nixon/Frost,” where the rebellious investigator is going to meet the President, and with bravado announces (at 46 sec. in the clip) his plans to be disrespectful (“Are you going to shake his hand?” “Are you kidding, after everything he’s done to this country?”) When the time comes, however, and he’s face-to-face with the man and the office, he’s submissively polite.

While social behavior can vary greatly from one situation to another, and depends upon one’s rank, to ‘fit into’ a community requires sensitivity to local norms. Truly, if you hate your social norms, hate the people who embrace those norms, and after extensive searching can find no other type, you are an object of pity. You have, as I see it, several options: (1) move; (2) adapt or (3) transform the norms. I have no proof of this, but I believe #3 is exceptionally hard to do, while the other two may be easier. Work done by people much smarter than me has gotten people of dramatically differing views together to discover that they had more in common than their rhetoric would have suggested. Then again, these were the people who showed up to talk, which would have made it a biased sample, to be sure.

If you can’t move or adapt, see if you can find one ‘cross-over’ who appears to fit in, but is open to those who don’t conform. See if you can learn from them what is the best part of the community, and who is most like them. Do things for them to be helpful, without an immediate (think decades) need to have this returned. Get involved in less contentious civic duties.

But get involved.

Some Thoughts on the Psychology of Community: Part I

It was a delight to read so many thoughtful writers commenting on John Michael Greer’s article on Community. Although it was a while ago, I thought I would add a my own comments here. This will be a two-part post.

The Community of “Fun” and the Hunger of the Middle Class
Real “community” doesn’t produce the same warm, fuzzy feelings it did at summer camp (whether the sleep-away or the ‘Dirty Dancing’ kind). It also lacks the excitement and spirit of your high school athletics team. No one has the job of orienting you and helping you make new friends, or settling disputes when all hell breaks lose. If you try to “create community” with fun group exercises and neat activities, it is tough to do it in any meaningful way, because those already active in the community don’t need it (but will probably show up anyway…they get involved in everything!), and those who aren’t active, don’t. There’s no ‘instant-clan,’ unless organizers manage to keep that ‘summer camp’ feeling of fun. That requires a lot of fossil fuel, and let’s face it, when the going gets tough, do we really want people who demand a good time before they’ll keep showing up? No, while fun might bring them in, I believe the serious among us need more than entertainment to stay involved.

The excitement of Transition Towns suits the middle-class because they need to have a feeling of community more than other social classes. Perhaps it isn’t the working-class “Nascar” families that Kunstler rails against, who’ll become the biggest losers of this economic calamity, but middle and upper-middle class professionals. We’ve been brought up on the notion of ‘success’ as an ever expanding paycheck, and a ladder leading us ever higher. We’ve chosen education and career ‘advancement’ that has kept us moving from place to place. Many of us have moved from good neighborhoods to better neighborhoods, never quite stopping long enough to know the people around us deeply or invest in one single “patch of ground.” And “success” has locked us into an increasing amount of monthly debt, requiring more, not less time at work.

The Tie That Binds
The fabric, the very woven connection between people, between parents and their children, between families and extended families, is a loss that can’t be bought with the extra incomes and in fact, often stretch this very fabric. We’ve offered the kids “quality time,” iPods and high-speed internet instead of belly-to-belly conversations, or expecting them to be needed working members of our clan. These same kids are, themselves, often fried from years of being shuffled off from school to after-school, to sports and then to musical lessons. Working-class parents can’t afford those kind of extra-curricula activities for their kids. Kids are sent back home to the ‘old neighborhood’ and are watched by grandparents or the neighbors. Professionals might call this “sub-standard” care, because it lacks the developmentally appropriate toys and the video reading programs, but it has other benefits few people talk about. The kids get to know the people who they live around, play around, and eventually grow into adulthood around. They marry neighborhood sweethearts and high school football stars. Sure, the houses are smaller, but nobody cares if you put in a garden on your front lawn, or repair your beater car in your driveway.

Necessity brings the working-class closer, where they are forced to get to know (and sometimes hate) the very people they are required to live among. Most don’t have the ‘luxury’ of moving away to a better area, as they get older and more experienced in their jobs. They aren’t trying to “look good” to maintain some notion of professional status. They complain about their parents or relatives “knowing their business,” but studies tell us they are healthier mentally (but not physically) than their wealthier counterparts, who barely know their families or their kids after the parental equivalence of “speed dating.” Yes, the middle-class needs an intense injection of something called “community,” if only once a month, and all the better if it happens with people who share a similar class perspective, a similar philosophy and similar fears.

The working classes, take part-time work to stay home more to raise children not because they are more devoted parents, but because few women of that class can make enough to justify the expense. The additional salary often barely covers the cost of child care, clothing, and other necessities connected to full-time work, so they work at night when someone is home, or during school hours. For many, this ‘one and a half earner’ household will change as children grow older, and can be left alone, but the connections to their neighborhoods will be secure by then.

The women aren’t often left lonely in their working-class neighborhoods during the day. They have friends around, family around, to contact and ask for help. This is even more true of the very poor. I know I generalize, and it isn’t true for everyone in that class, but I believe it is true that necessity creates community. If you are a single mother in an office job, there is no point working, if all of your salary goes to childcare. The more you can get help, the more successfully you can survive. But that help, when it comes from local neighborhood people rather than institutions, provides “community” connections that can be quite valuable.

Work as Community
Anyone who’s watched television shows like “The Office” knows for certain that co-workers can provide their own type of ‘community,’ but instead of summer camp, it can feel more like prison camp. If you work in the same small town you also live in, chances are that you experience a heightened sense of community, whether that’s a good feeling or not. Before fossil fuel, it was common to work where you lived, because traveling more than a mile or two every day just didn’t make sense. Now adays, it is more typical for people to travel one way 16 miles taking 26 minutes or more to do so. In a rural area, it can easily be twice that.

Whether you like your co-workers or not, chances are you ‘have to’ be there every day (if you want to keep it), and ‘have to’ get along, if just superficially. Like summer camp, alliances form, back-stabbing happens, and people help out their friends, while tattling on their enemies. This happens in real communities too.

Companionship, Common Need, and The Favor Bank
While work can provide a sense of community, employment lacks the sine qua non of true community life, and I’d define that as ‘companionship’ and ‘common need.’ These two things can happen at work, for example when your best buddy covers for you when you’re late, but the situation does not automatically pull for it, as a condition of employment.

I agree with Greer that most people get the ‘companionship’ part, but lack a clear grasp of how essential ‘common need’ is. Most people hate to be ‘dependent’ upon other people for ‘favors.’ Despite the world functioning interpersonally as a ‘favor bank,’ we’ve shrunk down the “borrowers” and “lenders” to as few people as possible. The poor and the working class have an extended favor bank out of necessity. It is a point of pride for those shifting to the higher classes, that they don’t have to rely on their families or friends for stuff anymore. They don’t have to borrow things, they can buy their own. They can take a shuttle to the airport, so they don’t have to ask for a ride. We have “professionals” take care of our kids, instead of grandparents or neighbors. A pity.

People Who Need People are Lucky?
Religious teachings say “it is better to give than to receive” and social and clinical psychology has proven that to be absolutely true for emotional and health reasons. The average person who “gets” but never “gives back” suffers terribly. You can make an old person sick just by never allowing them to return the favor. If you want to kill a person off quickly, make them totally dependent on you, and prevent them from reciprocating in any meaningful way. Nursing homes do this. Always do for them, and if they try to do back, refuse their help, or treat it as if what they give you is worthless, lame or even harmful. You can watch their health deteriorate after a while.

This may be why many folks work hard never to be ‘indebted’ to anyone. They can’t stand that feeling of being given to, without immediately evening the score. They always have to ‘pay the check.’ It’s one of the reasons why professional ‘do-gooders’ are resented by the very people they thought should be grateful. So the give and take of mutual indebtedness is best, instead of one-way.

The Poverty of Affluence
Orlov points out correctly that communities form quickly and effortlessly among the poor, but they also form quickly and internationally among those who have lived with several generations of uber-wealth. The multi-generational super-rich, who never knew want, suffer the poverty of needing nothing. This affliction is so uncomfortable, it is only relieved by being around other multi-generational super-rich families who suffer the same affliction. See the documentary “Born Rich.”

The very wealthy used to promote the old-fashioned feeling of being “fortunate” to be rich and “responsible” to give back to a society that made them that way. But alas, giving away wealth is very hard to do if what you are hoping for is true gratitude. Giving away wealth publicly exposes the individual to the risk of being taken advantage of. Few people want to reveal their great wealth to anyone who does not also share their great fortune.

We humans tend to regard a healthy (tax beneficial) endowment from a very wealthy person as less meaningful than a smaller endowment from a person of lesser means. It is a lot easier to demonstrate friendship materially if you are poor than if you are extremely wealthy. No matter how much you give, the belief is that you could have given more. While communities welcome the contributions of our wealthiest members, there remains the belief that this is the natural order of things: The rich have a “duty” to give and the rest of us have a “right” to receive. Who we define as “wealthy” varies with our social class.

Community does have within it the requirements for reciprocity, but this reciprocity can’t be applied in equal measure between people of all social classes. People of means are expected to give “until it hurts” (and we imagine it never does), while the those of lesser means give smaller contributions that seem to mean more. We assume it is going to “hurt,” even if their contribution is relatively small.

Poverty, Greed and Reciprocity
What about the person who feels entitled to get and never to give? Humans like to help others, but we don’t expect this to go on one-way forever, and we don’t expect those who “get” as displaying an obvious sense of entitlement. What’s returned doesn’t have to be material, it can be given in mutual support, time, or attention.

In addition, often those who feel most entitled to “get,” never quite feel that they get enough. These people risk social ostracism in tight-knit communities, although they might get by more easily in larger cities.

But how do we know who “gets” without returning the gesture?

We’ll cover that in our next segment…

The Psychology of the ‘Space Cowboy’ Prepper

Here is a post offering hope to those who consider themselves ’spaced out,’ ADHD (attention deficit), scattered, air-headed, a Space Cowboy, forgetful, inconsistent, unreliable and the like. There IS hope for you, and you can prep. First, however, a disclaimer:

The Organized
Anything you read in this post is in no way advocating this mind-set. I personally admire the people I know who routinely do the dishes after they eat (meaning they make regular meals and eat at an assigned time), do laundry on an assigned day so they never run out of underwear, hang up their clothes immediately after taking them off, never wear woolens two days in a row, keep houseplants (even fussy ones) alive, happy and thriving, start seed at the assigned times and watch them grow into hardy starter plants, plow and shovel at the first hint of snow so it doesn’t turn into hard-rock ice that is a challenge to walk on, and the like. They wake up early, retire early, brush their teeth nightly and their bedsheets are always straightened and crumb-less. Let’s call them “The Organized.”

Be like that, if you can.

The REST of Us
That said, I want to talk to the rest of you, and you know who you are. Yes, you… don’t hide your head behind that computer. We (yes, I’m one of you…) are the ones certain that we’ll fail miserably when the Armageddon comes, because we’re too spaced out now to accomplish what “The Organized” people seem to be able to do. We forget things…sometimes wicked important things…like birthdays, dentist’s appointments, or first frost days. We get inspirations that keep us up late at night, and tired the next morning. Our “priorities” (perhaps the ones someone else gave us that we’ve accepted…) get mixed up. We sometimes eat dessert first, and ignore the dishes. We buy replacements for things we “know we have here somewhere…” but can’t find. We get into a ‘groove’ about something and overdo it. We spend a huge amount of time planting and then forget to water or even worse harvest the stuff we planted. I could go on, but you know if I’m talking to you or not.

The Power of Enthusiasm
You, my friend, can prep. You need only one trait you’ve got to hold on to, and not let go of: enthusiasm. When you’ve once again ‘blown it,’ and left the lid off a bucket of grain, so the mice had a ’storage field day,’ you have to say “oh well…” and assume that you now have done your part to feed the wildlife.

When your certainty about the ‘end of the world’ has alienated you from your best friend, or your spouse or kids, you have to show up with a bottle or basket or movie of some really ’stupid’ or ‘wasteful’ or ‘frivolous’ thing and say “I’m sorry for being a jerk, let’s have some fun.”

You have to forgive yourself and ignore all the work you put into cataloging something you accidentally used to start a fire with.

The Cost of Being a Space Cowboy
You have to assume that, unlike “The Organized” person you might prefer to be, things are going to take you longer, going to cost you more, and are going to be more difficult to accomplish, to name a few. Don’t let it depress or sicken you. Don’t beat yourself up about it. Just accept that ‘that’s the way it is’ and keep yourself enthusiastic, and don’t stop prepping.

You and I both know you can’t possibly accomplish everything on that list by next year, because you start something, do a bit on it, and then go on to something else. Then, that first project you started…the dog peed on it or the cat scratched it, or it got left out in the rain and rusted, or it didn’t get left out in the rain and dried out. Proper attitude? “Oh well.”

Sequential Projects
When you get bored to tears doing something that you were ‘certain’ was going to be your next full-time job after ‘it all blows up’ and now you can’t stand the sight of it, just try something different. After a while, you will hopefully invest a bit less than the ‘family farm’ on those projects, until you are really sure you can stand to do them long-term. And what’s ‘long term’ anyway? After your fifth candle, when you decide ‘wax is not for me,’ you can now make a candle. Let that be enough, even if your plans to start a ‘candle coop’ couldn’t hold a flame.

Stop yourself from that line of thinking that says “No point in trying THAT again, you’ll just screw it up!” Of COURSE you’ll ’screw it up’ again. So what?! Every single time you ’screw it up again,’ you’re learning something, and that ’something’ is worth a whole lot. Stay enthusiastic. Keep your attitude light-hearted.

Outrunning the Bear?
Despite what those scary dudes on Deadly Doomer Sites tell you, you won’t be the slowest one running from the bear–because you’ve already started to train for the marathon. It’s a long-distance race, my friend. Sprinting won’t help you, if that’s all you can do. Run however you want, even dance or hop if it inspires you to keep going. If you fall down, just get up again, and go on. Compare yourself to yourself, from year-to-year. Keep getting a bit more skill, read a few more books, put another week’s worth of food in your pantry–or another day’s worth–or another can. No matter how small or useless it might seem to you, after all of your grand plans, just keep going. It adds up.

Space Cowboys Love that they’ve Prepped
The truth is, prepping is great for the Space Cowboy, it really is. Despite yourself, you are learning habits–good habits–that will make your life easier, not harder for you. If you start storing food, you’ll realize that it’s okay that ‘you forgot to go shopping like you promised on Friday, because you discovered a used book store going out of business and got so engrossed gathering up all these great books to buy, so lost track of time, and the market was closed by the time you realized it, or you ran out of money.‘ You and your family will still eat, because you have a food storage.

“Oh DARN!” you say, after you are 3/4 of the way through a pot luck meal you are making for a dinner that started 15 minutes ago: “I ran out of EGGS!” Not to worry. You have powdered eggs, you smart prepper. You can use that can you put in storage ‘for an emergency.’

This is ‘an emergency.’

Feeding the Wildlife #2
Go ahead. Open it up and use it. Maybe you’ll figure out what to do with the remaining 297 egg portions, or maybe you won’t. Right now, you need three eggs, and they are there waiting for you. If you discover, two years later, that you still have that #10 can of powdered eggs, all filled with crawl-ees, don’t worry. You are feeding the wild-life. Next time, you’ll buy a smaller can, or you’ll learn how to make something really EGGY with the left-overs. Stop beating yourself up. Because of your prepping, you got to the pot luck while the late arrivals were still eating, and you had something to bring, to boot. This is a victory! Feel good about yourself.

A Bevy of Space Cowboys
Getting around happy Space Cowboys really helps, as well. It helps the struggling cow-hand to keep a positive outlook, and see the benefits of being spaced. If you only hang around ‘The Organized,’ you may need to broaden your social circle a bit. The more people you connect with around community-building, the more you’ll come across people who just look similarly disheveled, hurried, disorganized, and muttering apologetically as they ruffle through their purses saying: “I’m sure I have one of those in here somewhere.” Extend a hand, and make their acquaintance. Take it upon yourself to call them two hours before the event they said they were “dying” to go to, and ask if they are still going. Maybe over time, they may start to return the favor and you’ll say, as they did:

“OMIGOD! I forgot COMPLEETELY about it!!! Thank you SOOO much for calling and reminding me!”

Stupid-Free Zone
Another bit of advice is to try your best to take the word “stupid” out of your vocabulary as in: “I’m really sorry, that was really stupid of me.” “I’m sorry” is perfectly adequate.

Targeted Help
Another is to learn your weaknesses and ask for some targeted help. What if you are a 90%-er? You get the project done all the way to 90%, and then you stop. Ask for help on the last 10%. I know ‘it’s too stupid, I should really be able to do it myself, I know how and blah blah blah.’

Just ASK.

If you are afraid you’ll space out that talk or meeting you want to go to, ask for a ride or offer one. Then tell them to call you to arrange a time to be picked up/pick up. What if you double book? Here’s where a pin-up calendar in a really obvious place comes in. I mean REALLY obvious, someplace, like the bathroom, where you can’t HELP but see it. Datebooks are fine, if you can keep them in one location, or carry them with you, but one index card in your pocket, and a pin-up calendar in your bathroom or on your nightstand, where you can’t help but stare at it is great. If you use a computer, use a sticky program, and put your ‘to do’s’ on it. Change the color of the background periodically, so you don’t start ignoring it.

“I’ll Remember That.”
Never use the words: “I’ll remember that.” “The Organized” can use those words.

You can not.

Pull out that one index card you keep, and write it down, or call your home line and leave yourself a message about what you are putting on your calendar. Leave yourself TWO messages, in fact. Leave one with the message, and leave a second one saying:

“Kathy, I’m serious. Put this on the calendar RIGHT NOW!” Sound really powerful and insistent, or else ‘Kathy’ will just think she can ignore herself, and ‘remember’ to put it on ‘later.’ From one Space Cowboy to another, my friend, there is no “later” when it comes to putting it on the calendar. There is only right now.

One Calendar, but Multiple Other Things
Also, don’t worry about doing things over and over or in three different ways, or in three different places if that helps you–except in a calendar. Keep only ONE CALENDAR, and keep it in a central location, unless the things on it only pertain to one place, like where you work, and you only do those things AT work.

Keep it Simple, Cowboy…
Try to under-think everything, when it comes to making plans. Make most things so simple and easy to accomplish that anyone who can understand a TV commercial can understand the plan, and keep track of it. Do it by hand, whenever possible. Avoid complex computer programs that ’save time’ unless that’s your line of work and you intend on using this program every single day. Print it out, just in case, if it is a new program for you. At least, if the “free” period expires or you forget your password, you still have the information you put in there.

Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.
It takes 21 days to instill a new habit. Repetition is really important to the Space Cowboy. Doing things once a year or on the “third Tuesday of the alternate full moon” is the kiss of death, unless you get the calendar thing down and schedule that in for the next 6 “third Tuesdays of the alternate….” While you aren’t going to rely on your memory for stuff, you really should do your best to try to learn useful new facts by OVERLEARNING them. Don’t be afraid to post the things you are trying to overlearn in a variety of places, or copy them down repeatedly.

How do you LEARN?
Figure out how you learn, whether by visual, auditory, or kinesthetic means, and reinforce your learning this way. For example, if you are an auditory learner, make a tape of the stuff and listen to it as you cook. (You don’t even have to pay full attention to it. Just make sure you can hear it. I tied for first place on a State psychology licensing exam this way, so it really works!) Or repeat the posted note aloud. If you are visual, make flash cards, or watch a movie repeatedly that provides the information or read three different articles on it.

Kinesthetic is tougher, but can be done. Trying to remember how much water to add to kidney beans? Slap your hand on your knee (amount of beans = one hand) and push your knees together (amount of water = two knees). It sounds dumb, I know, but if you are a kinestetic learner, when you try to remember, you’ll want to slap your hand on your knees and it will come back to you. Or literally “go through the motions” or imagine yourself doing that every night before bedtime. Make the imagination as vivid as possible and “feel yourself” doing it.

The Power of Imagination
Imagination is a great way to learn, and can be done in a lot of places where you would otherwise be bored. Imagine what that garden would look like in May, June and July. Hear the sounds of the outdoors, as if you are out there. Feel your hands in the cool soil. Do it while you are waiting for a bus, when you are having trouble sleeping, or while waiting in a check-out line. See yourself as successful in the endeavor you are trying to master.

The Hunter and the Farmer
Finally, recognize that if “The Organized” are the “farmers” of our culture, than the Space Cowboys are the “hunters,” ever ready to respond to the unexpected, heading out to hunt at 11 pm, and staying light on their feet to change at a minute’s notice. Accept your style and learn to work with it.

You might even find that you get so good at “compensating” that you’ll hear this from one of The Organized: “Wow! You are so ORGANIZED!” Smile demurely, and congratulate yourself. You got that one down, so go on to the next thing. (But don’t expect those kinds of complements on all you do!)

“I’ll Build a Stairway to Paradise, with a New Blog Every Day!”
One last hint for the bloggers in the audience: More than once I’ve tried to look for a piece of information I recorded, but couldn’t find anywhere. Then a light went off! I BLOGGED on that topic!!! I found it in an instant, and was delighted! Because blogging is free, you can start your own ‘all the things I’ll forget if I don’t blog about it here” blog, and print it out, just in case. Make tags for every word you can associate with that topic, so you can easily search the search engine for “All the things I forgot” (blog name) and the words you associate with what you are trying to find. AHAH! There it is, right on the internet!

See how smart and organized you are?

Now I gutta go, because I got too caught up in writing this blog and I’m behind on the next thing I’m supposed to do…

P.S. I’m still going to write about the Family Life cycle class, so still stay tuned!

P.S.S. I really want to hear from other Space Cowboys here. If you are one of The Organized, do them a favor and send them this link (with a note telling them how much you love them!) Cowboys, send it on to other Cowboys, to give them inspiration to keep on keeping on!

Heat-Free Bloggin?

Just for the record, I’m not a ‘heat-free blogger.’ I do keep the downstairs of my home 45 degrees at night, that is true, but it usually never dips below 50. It’s also true that DH and I moved down stairs onto a make-shift couch/twin bed in the music room, and shut off the heat upstairs. He braves the cold, showers and dresses up there, but again, it is seldom actually gets down below 48 even when the heat is off.

I’m not that brave. I’ve moved my clothes down here, and grab a shower downstairs as well. But in the daytime, when I feel chilled to the bone, I’ll crank the heat up to 64 from the 58 I leave it at. When it gets dark, it automatically goes up to 64 for another few hours, just so we can get dinner going, and socialize before bed. Then it automatically goes down to 45, but, as I said, it’s never lower than 50, and more often 52 because my house is well insulated with double-pane windows.

I’d call it “refreshing” to travel from an exceptionally warm bed with a down comforter (and a man from Southern Italian roots who’s a blow-torch of heat…) out to the “cold air” to run to the bathroom at night. My feet and legs are also often outside the covers during some periods to “cool off.” I also have two cats and two dogs to join us in bed, if we’re really feeling chilly!

Yes, I’ve developed a different relationship to the cold, than I had last year. Last year I was wimpy, expecting some sort of award for bearing the cold. This year, honestly, it is just ‘life,’ and not a particularly hard one at that. In fact, when the wood furnace is going full-throttle, and it gets hot in this house, I don’t feel very good physically. I’ve learned that I can always get warm, but not so when it’s too hot. My face goes flush, and I feel ill. I’ve come to really appreciate the delight of an intense heat source, like the corn stove I have in my clinical office. Standing in front of it directs a blast of heat: deeply penetrating heat.

A few years ago, when I told a class (in context) that I kept my house below 50 at times, one student expressed genuine concern that it “wasn’t healthy.” This is so relative. In the dead of winter, on my honeymoon years ago, the weather in Boston shot up to the high forties to low fifties, and people began wearing shorts and tee shirts. And how many of us run out to our gardens on the first warm day, delighting in the ‘balmy’ 50 degree weather?

It’s also true that if I’m fighting a cold or flu, I don’t let the temp drop below 64. Fighting a cold gets into your bones, and it’s hard to warm up when you’re feeling ill, in a cold house.

If you aren’t used to keeping a cool house, but want to be, start at night, and wear a soft hat if you need to, for a while. You’ll adjust to not needing one, and eventually prefer it cool. In the daytime, have a sweatshirt with a hoodie, and if you get cold, wear it up around your head. You’ll warm up quickly, and if you don’t, jump in and take a hot shower.

More and more, though, I’m thinking we Americans have got to get over this idea of “central heating/air conditioning,” and instead consider comfort only in the rooms we’re in. Have you seen these neat tables that have a heater attached underneath them with a blower? You put a large blanket over it, your feet (in a kimono is best because the heat shoots up your whole body) under the table, and there you sit and socialize, all cozy warm. They are called kotatsu.

Well, that’s my fifty cents on home heating, but really, it’s hardly a hard luck tale of “Psychologist on Ice.” I’ve just come to expect that I’ll wear a tee, a shirt, and a sweater in my house, and if I don’t and claim I’m cold, I need to dress warmer. It’s been a very cold winter here in the hills, with many days hovering around 0-5 degrees. That’s cold. Inside my home, it’s still a warm place to be.

Blending Worlds

This semester, I’m teaching in two graduate psychology programs, both specializing in Marriage and Family Therapy (MFT). Both courses, which I’ll talk about here, beginning with the first one, take up a lot of time to prepare for and teach, and they’ve kept me away from talking to all of you.

But this morning I thought to myself, as I reflected on a lecture I gave last night: Why does it have to be so? I bring my Big 3-E awareness into my classroom, why not do the reverse? So, taking the risk of boring you all to tears, I’ve decided to talk about these courses (selectively, of course) as they inform my understanding of my work in the Big 3-E field.

First, let me describe the first course to you:

Discourses in Psychopathology
The first course attempts to introduce first-year MFTs to the DSM IV-TR-the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. Unlike a typical Psychopathology class, however, MFT’s don’t think about problems as existing within people, but rather between people, their families, their communities, their regions, countries, and ultimately their world and the times they live through. This poses a tension that I’ve spoken about in The DSM Trilogy earlier in this blog. Try as they might to put “mental illness” under the subheading of “physical illness,” the fit remains a poor one. There are no blood tests or similar physical ways to test if someone qualifies for a particular psychiatric diagnosis and the effort to fit problems like these into discrete categories were pressured by governmental agencies, the US census, big pharm, managed care and similar forces.

Theoretical Wars on Labels
However, a tension exists, because this book, a clinical “cookbook” of terms and definitions, written in plain English, is what’s used among mental health professionals of all types to communicate with each other. While during the early years, MFT’s waged a good war to suggest an alternative vision, the forces mentioned above won out. We now all speak DSM, whether it describes how we see things or not.

Benefits and Limitations of Categorization
There are helpful aspects to this approach: categorization helps to aid memory, manipulate information, and conduct research. But the limitations of categorization is that it becomes reified. Reification is like the impression a butterfly makes when it gets covered in resin. It’s not a butterfly, because it misses its movement, its life. Reifying something leaves us with all the impression and outline of the idea, but we’ve had to kill it and harden it in order to hold it in our hands, and measure it. You lose important aspects when you categorize and label. You can too easily mistake the label as “the real thing.” People “become” the label (e.g. “I’m a borderline…”) Human beings live and function in relationship to their environment and to the people and culture they come in contact with and grew up in. Labels have limits, and the map isn’t the territory.

Big Job for New Students
So my mission is to both encourage students to become familiar with, read and work with case material, using the DSM, as well as have them do so while understanding it’s power to label and pathologize, normalize abnormal behavior within that label, and its extreme limits in capturing the human condition and human dilemma.

New graduate students are a nervous bunch typically, and the DSM offers the hope that they can finally know something tangible. The DSM is quite seductive that way, because it has neat descriptors including guidelines such as “3 or more of the following” which qualifies a person for this or that diagnostic label. Also, psychology isn’t like nanoscience in that everyone believes because they have a psychology that they know quite a bit about it. If anyone picked up the DSM who could read an evening tabloid, they could understand it and think they could use it to diagnose themselves or others. This is the danger.

Mary is Depressed
So part of my job is to put doubt into the hearts of these eager students that they or anyone else is actually doing much when they diagnose someone. I ask them over and over “Why do we say ‘Mary is depressed?’” and they respond “Because Mary reports or shows the symptoms that have been labeled as ‘Depression’.”

One clever student asked “But what if Mary omits some of the symptoms she’s feeling, when she’s reporting them to the professional, so they don’t add up to the diagnosis of ‘depression?’ Does that mean that the person doesn’t get help? I know that happens…” and indeed it does. Fortunately, a skilled professional can ask questions, which allows him/her to determine whether her hopeless or helpless emotional state is accompanied by things like low sex drive, problems sleeping or eating, and the like. But what does that label leave us in the end? Is ‘depression’ like a kidney disease or iron deficiency? They learn that it is not, despite the fact that this syndrome causes pain (and even death by suicide) to those suffering from it.

Mary Shows Depressive Signs
I suggest that instead of saying “Mary is depressed” they say instead: “Mary shows depression.” Framing in this way leads to logical questions such as “who does Mary show depression to? Does she ever not show depression? How does she show depression?” and the like. “Having” depression is a frozen state that exists as part of you. “Showing” depression is an active external act. The difference is more than semantics to beginning clinicians. It is a world-view that leads them to contextualize, rather than reify, Mary and her mood.

Value-Clear not Value-Free
The DSM attempts to be “atheoretical” as to etiology. This means that it takes no position as to how “pathology” arises, or what maintains it, except where there is a clear family history of the disorder. My job is to help the student to understand that there IS no such animal as “atheoretical.”

Every phenomenon we can study emerges from a theory, and all theories have biases. The most dangerous biases come from folks who claim they are “value-free.” If you don’t believe you have a bias, you are unlikely to take a look at what they are and to examine how they might be misleading you or pointing out things that aren’t so.

Genetic Predisposition or Inevitability?
And I ask “If a person has a parent or grandparent with a diagnosis of depression, does this mean that every offspring will be given this same diagnostic label? If not, why not? If there is a genetic component to depression, why are some relieved of suffering from this syndrome?” We are taught to think “They have a family history of this diagnosis” and not “They have family members who do not experience these symptoms.” The glass is both half-full AND half-empty. Pre-dispositions aren’t either inevitable nor explanatory.

‘Brain Fag’ and Shrinking Penises
So one way I try to help students see the relational-bound nature of diagnosing is to point out psychiatric conditions in what are called “cultures-bound syndromes.” My favorite is “brain fag.” Brain fag (to quote one research article) is “A very common psychoneurotic syndrome occurring among the students of southern Nigeria … The symptoms are such as to prevent the student from carrying on with his work and include various unpleasant head symptoms accompanied by inability to grasp what he reads or what he hears in a lecture, memory loss, visual difficulties, inability to concentrate, inability to write, etc.”

Koro is another of these, where a man fears his penis is shrinking and retracting into his body. We see Koro in China, Malaysia, and Indonesia and, horrifying to its sufferers, it often strikes groups of men.

And what’s an example of a culture-bound Western syndrome? Anorexia nervosa, and bulimia nervosa, two eating disorders thought to be brought on by standards that are media-encouraged and permeate culture-wide.

Tomorrow, I’ll talk about the course I’m teaching in Family Life Cycle. Write to you then!

In a PeakShrink’s Garden

A frequent reader was surprised that I had a garden!

I’ve been in the dirt most of my life, picking dandelions, because my brothers didn’t LIKE dirt!

Last year, we grew radishes and carrots, peas, potatoes, squash-winter and summer, turnip, lots of tomatoes (most didn’t make it because of the blight) strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, elderberries, beets, we have a HUGE asparagus patch, rabbi and asian greens, lettuce, Swiss chard, Egyptian onions (walking onions), and we planted a few nut trees. I also grow a lot of herbs, many perennial, and mint for teas.

Every year, we’ve been trying to add a few new raised beds, perfect our composting, and add “nitrogen fixers” that will keep working year after year. You can also see that some plants I’ve listed just keep reproducing year after year, without our having to plant them. The berries, asparagus, Egyptian onions, trees and herbs fall into this category. We also have “volunteers” that come back, like mustard greens, that are becoming our “weeds.” Hooray for edible weeds!

We’re grown hot peppers before, but the sweet peppers like it hotter than we can offer, and many times we have to bring in the tomatoes to ripen. We lust for a greenhouse, and have been collecting old windows in anticipation. In the meanwhile, I’ll start putting down “tunnels” of gauzy fabric designed just for this purpose, to keep in the heat and keep out the bugs.

In years past, we’ve grown melon, beans, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, kale and brussels sprouts. I’m going to plant all of them again this year, especially the kale and brussels sprouts. I really missed going out and dusting off the snow to harvest them this past December.

Here’s the powerful feeling about gardening: you MISS the things you don’t plant and eat. They become like dear friends you haven’t seen in a while and want to see again. You might start out seeing them all like a crowded dance hall full of people. Soon, though, they develop names and faces (and tastes) that you miss and look forward to seeing again. You notice that some really like you and want to grow big and proud. Others fail to show up some years, but the next year, they grow to beat the band!

I was complaining about some lemon balm that died two years in a row on my garden. My now late-friend Pat said “I’ll give you some that will stay around and you won’t be able to get rid of it!” She did, and I now have a hardy plant who’s seeds I circulate. You can see it in the “after” picture below.

Form groups of people who love to garden. They’ll have raspberry bushes they are dying to pass along to you, or advice to share about how to be successful in your area. No matter whether you have acres or a small balcony, take up the company of plants and learn how to become a good steward. They’ll reward you for your patience.

So let me show you an example of what an “impaired” gardener can do…

This is what the front yard USED to look like:

Old front yard

Then, we got rid of the grass, dumped extra soil, and we got this:

Of course, you have to be willing to put up with this: (the soil was HORRIBLE that got delivered. Full of rocks we needed to remove, and hardly any dark, rich, fluffy stuff you look for. The guy who delivered it felt bad when he dumped it, and gave us a great break on it. We spent years getting it to improve, but it happened!

During

But even that first year, with lousy soil, we got this:

Zucchini!

And we turned it into this:

Drying Zucc's

Here’s what I fell in love with this year:

Italian Rose Bean

I hope she’ll come to my corner of the dance hall and dance with me!

Seed-choosing Time

If you are a Do-More Doomer, and you live in a cold climate, January and February are seed-picking times. It is a time to comb through catalogs or online for inspiration or solace that no matter how cold it is, or short the days, or how long the snow has covered the ground, Spring is on its way.

It lifts the spirits to select seeds, but for the beginning gardener, or one, like myself, who has for so long placed myself in the category of “gardening-impaired” or even “special needs gardener,” it used to be an overwhelming task. I’d start by selecting catalogs that offered open pollinated seeds. That eliminates quite a few. I’d even focus on heirloom varieties, and that cut it down as well. But still had an overwhelming variety to choose from. How to pick?

One sure way to kill the joy of gardening for the beginner is to pick too many of each kind of crop, and choose too many varieties in each. To do so means madly running from one reference book to another, wondering whether the Ph of one goes with the Ph of another, etc. It can easily be discouraging when you forget to water 40 seedling starters and nothing germinates.

I know. I’ve done it.

This year, I’ve discovered something that surprises me, that I’m passing along to you: Despite making repeated mistakes in my gardening attempts, despite calling myself “gardening-impaired” and the like, just the act of trying to grow something over the years has given me knowledge that has started to build.

Nothing. I’ll repeat: Nothing is as good a practice as selecting something to grow and putting it in the ground. I don’t care if you’ve selected a tropical plant and put it into the semi-frozen ground on March 1st. Your failure taught you something. There is something deep-down inside us that can’t accept watching a plant, a living thing, fail to grow, and there’s something deep inside us that is absolutely thrilled to see something take off, growing to beat the band. That first success, which for me was squash, hooks me and kept me going.

I’m one of those gardeners that “forgets” plants and related chores. I assumed that it was a permanent condition, but it’s not. What I realized is that just like learning to check your email, you need to get into a rhythm to introduce some new routine. It takes 21 days to establish a new habit, and after that, you stop thinking about having to remember to do it. You just do.

A friend of mine said something profound to me at dinner last night. She is one of those gardeners who I always thought was made to grow things. She’s regular in her habits anyway, and is quite pragmatic. She said “I’ve studied all these types of ways to grow plants, permaculture, and lasagna, and square foot growing and intensive feed, and you know what? Now’s the time to develop my own method of gardening.”

She wasn’t saying she was going to start a movement and write a book. She was saying that she was at the stage where she simply accepted what has worked for her, in her own garden, and is going to do things her way, regardless of what the ‘experts’ think about it. That’s a great place to be. She’s not growing okra or endive. She’s not growing anything, no matter how “healthy” if she doesn’t have a positive association with it. She likes eggplant to eat, but its just too cold here, and too temperamental to grow it. Gourd are pretty, but they don’t get an inch in her garden, either. What about spaghetti squash, she asked me? “Yes!” I exclaimed, “I ignored it for months, and it still kept growing and lasted for months in my cool bedroom!” I told her how to prepare it. No garden berries, though and no matter how enthusiastically someone endorses kohlrabi, it’s not growing in her garden, at least this year.

A few years ago, I sat in a lecture by a woman that had come out from Oregon to talk to us at Dave Jacke’s Forest Gardening seminar. She showed pictures and said something outrageous. She showed a picture of herself tossing lettuce and other greens around her front yard. She just flung them freely. There were no neat rows. She didn’t take a string and use a tool to draw a straight line in the soil. She said she was creating the “weeds” she wanted to grow all around her.

Next, this gardening rebel let her plants overwinter, and Heaven Forbid! she allowed the broccoli and cauliflower to mix! This gardening free-thinker was unapologetic. She was willing to taste the results and let the mating happen as it will.

I never forgot that woman’s talk, because she appealed to the rebellious and lazy side of myself that just didn’t want to have to find string, and hammer in stakes to make straight lines. The way she talked, she made gardening sound, dare I say it, “fun.”

If you are, like me, a believer in your inherent limitations to grow something; if you believe you LACK thumbs, never mind a green one, take heart. If you like food, and you like to see the true miracle of things that are little becoming edible food all by themselves, with only minimum help from you, pick up a seed catalog and just read it, like a good novel. Don’t even read it, become a toddler and just look at the pictures. If you find a picture you just keep starring at, THEN you can read the caption. Grow it because you are attracted to the way it looks (even if you KNOW it won’t look like that in YOUR garden, or believe it won’t.) Stop panicking that you have to grow it all this year, or you’ll starve to death. Grow one or two or three things that you are drawn to because they look so pretty in the seed catalog and it lifts your spirits to look at it.

The more I hang around gardeners, the more I pick up little facts that seem so elementary to other people. I wanted to learn it all, and well, before I dared to risk failure. Well, I’ll tell you, that’s a big mistake, so don’t do it. Just pick something you like to eat, or something that has really big leaves to fill your garden, or something that’s just pretty or pretty cool, and go for it. You are going to learn something from the experience. You are going to increase your ability to distinguish one thing from another. You are going to start increasing your familiarity with your land, and with your soil, and grabbing a hand full of soil is going to give you a sensory experience. Hang out at gardening shops and grab the soil there, and notice the difference. There will be no tests at the end. No one will mark you down for forgetting to harvest the stuff at the end, or refusing to eat it because you don’t like the taste. Just compost it all.

This year, for the first year in 4, I’ll be planting flowers and maybe even that melon that tastes “bland” but smells great. I’m going to make tremendous mistakes, and not care. I’m going to start seedlings too early or too late, and watch them grow. I’m going to “waste” electricity with broad-spectrum lights hovering over treasured little green babies. In other words, this year, I’m going to have fun.

Don’t like it? Sue me or report me to the gardening police.

Wife’s New Job Offer Threatens to Pull this Peaker from Homestead Paradise

Dear Peak Shrink,

Not sure how I arrived at this point. All my life I have been “aware” something was wrong, but I was told to stop thinking that way…I was born in the early 60’s…I was adopted and had a sense of not fitting in. I just went on believing what was out there. The dominant culture took me over and won. I was part of the system. I have been through some very tough times lately, and have come to some very important places in my life. I took the red pill and feel awake while other around me are fully asleep. I found many that think like me, but only on the web. There are one or two people that have some understanding of what is going on, but are not being listened to here. I find myself very alone.I want to do the thing that resonates inside me for my family, but they don’t want to hear it at all. They give me that “look” that I know is not were they are listening but judging. How to I do what is needed? For them.

Homesteader in Paradise

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Dear H in P,

The first thing you need is a plan. Don’t worry if it isn’t the “right” plan, because plans change. That’s a given. Write down a plan, then break it down into manageable pieces. Most people over-estimate what they can do in a year, but UNDER-estimate what they can do in 10 years. Lay out the pieces you want to accomplish in 2010, and assume you’ll make modifications along the way. Assess your current situation, skills, debts, resources, location, food storage, etc carefully. Look squarely at it, unflinchingly.

If you have few supports in ‘real life’ then accept this as a given for right now. You’ll probably be surprised to learn how many people actually think the way you do, but have been silenced by the same pressures you feel. Once you decide the types of skills you need to develop, you’ll have more opportunities to find those who share your worries and concerns. Get very concrete, and start conversations with the one or two that think as you do. Anticipate the sort of changes that you’ll see in your neighborhood, and ask yourself what you can do to impact those events.

Don’t assume that everyone in your family has to “be on board” for you to act. There are many things you can do, once you set your mind to it, that can be framed in a way that most people can understand. For example, storing food can be framed as “buying in bulk to save money.” Learning carpentry or gardening is a useful skill. Paying off debt can be “good commonsense.”

The most important lesson you’ve already learned, is that you can stand apart, be ‘different,’ and it won’t kill you. You can ‘think differently’ and everyone doesn’t have to agree with you.

When I pointed out that hard times were coming, almost 4 years ago, I didn’t make a big deal of it. I just said it, and said the kinds of things I thought would happen, then dropped it. Now, to those I told, they look at me differently, because they know I was right. No one has said “You were right!” but they don’t have to. Don’t try to push your agenda on them. Allow it to be enough to know you what you know, and begin to make the changes you believe have to happen. Take yourself “heart attack” seriously, but don’t insist that other people agree with you. And keep in mind the advice to put on your own oxygen mask first, and then attend to the people around you.

Does that make sense?

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Dear Peak Shrink,

Thank You so much for the reply.

Yes, that makes a whole lot of sense to me. I have always been making our “little homestead” as efficient as possible without saying too much to those around. I have been saying things like those you suggest. I put in a wood stove a few years back to offset the cost of our gas bill. I have my grandfathers bow saw and many hand tools that no one else wanted. My problem is this: my wife (whom I adore) has a job offer in a large city) we currently have a house that is small 1000 sq ft, has 2 acres of land and a stream on it. Along with deer, many trees and a large amount of wilderness around us, we have managed to pay it off. We do have some debt but not a mortgage. Our city is about 100k with farmland and we live in a smaller community about 10 mins to the farmland area. If she takes this job we have to move from our possible safe little community to a large urban city.

I am wondering how to tell my wife that our best place to be is here, and to continue working towards less financial commitments. We have a good neighborhood of a few doctors and small hobby farms as well. Seems perfect for us. We also have the potential for a greenhouse on our property. I don’t want to give all that up. We already know how to preserve vegetables, do our own carpentry, electrical, garden, filter water.

Any suggestions how to approach my wife on peak oil and have her believe it is real?

BTW , You are the first person I have ever written to on the internet. I found your website through a few links (not sure what ones) and found solace in your words. I am truly grateful for the time you took to write back.

I only hope I can find the peaceful way to tell my wife (met in high school a zillion years ago) that we can find a new togetherness in this next quest in our lives.

She is an Autism Spectrum Disorder Consultant (yes, with caps..lol) and is truly a soul of the earth. She does not like bad news like peak oil. We have our teenagers, two malamutes and live in [Northern Canada]. I hope we can stay here and face peak oil and what it will mean for us, our children, and our community together in a real spirit of altruism.

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Didn’t get back to him fast enough, so our contributor wrote again!
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Dear Peak Shrink,

OK Christmas is over. Time to reflect on the latest. I wish for my wife to at least do some investigation into my belief in peak oil. Her father was a newspaper man and did very well financially. The kids believe he is some master at figuring out what to do financially because he did so well in the 80’s and 90’s. They don’t know it was because cheap energy allowed many to do well then. He has never once mentioned the possibility of anything changing. They (he and my Mom-in-law) still snowbird to [warm USA state].

I think he believes I am always worrying too much. If he was supportive, maybe his daughters would listen. I seem to be all alone in this. I know that there are tough times coming and want to prepare, but I am like a three wheeled car. Most people I know are moving out to work in the Alberta tar sands. Our economy has taken a big hit here (Northern Canada) already (we were once a thriving population built on wood products and paper mills). I have family in British Columbia and it is a very beautiful place to live. Toronto is where my wife is looking to relocate to. That means a big mortgage for us. We are in our 40’s. No time to pay it off now. How do i get my wife to believe me? I think we should stay put.

Hope you are doing well. I don’t expect a reply, just writing this out helps me put things into perspective.

***************************************

Here are my thoughts:

Your wife wants to move to a place you don’t want to go, and buy an expensive house you don’t want to own. Forget the issue of Peak Oil. You have a legitimate difference of opinion right there! Moving and assuming a mortgage is a major commitment not to be taken lightly, and usually requiring mutual agreement.

How would things change for you, if your wife “believed” in PO? How would she act differently? What would she DO differently?

I’d get away from trying to convince anyone of anything, and focus specifically on what you want from her. If you want her to listen to you, even if it makes you and her anxious, and you know it is a lot to ask, say so. If you want her to stop spending money and save more of it, say that. And be prepared to give a listening ear back. Actually listen attentively to what she has to say about the move and the new home. See if you both can get behind the DREAM she’s aiming for, and see if it can be met another way. Many people can’t listen unless they feel really understood by the person. Her job sounds like it involves understanding people who’s behavior can be quite confusing, and learning how to influence it in a positive direction. She probably could use a bit of listening to, as well. The opposite of listening isn’t talking, it’s waiting to speak. Really listen to the dream behind her words, and articulate that back to her.

Sounds like a newspaper man knows how quickly a thriving business can turn around. Newspapers are dying left and right here. They’ve gone the way of the button, once the zipper was introduced. Don’t worry about trying to get him on board. Just talk to him about how smart he was to be in the right business at the right time, and how different it is for talented guys, just like he was, to be starting out today. Agree that no one can predict the future with 100% accuracy, but that’s what most of us are required to do anyway, if we get a clear signal that change is demanded of us. He can probably talk about a time when he made a bold move that everyone else thought “wouldn’t work” but it did. Ask him about how he managed to pull it off, when his was the minority opinion, and he was risking a lot. All successful men, in addition to being in the right place at the right time (oil’s a given) also thought differently or were willing to make tough choices. Don’t try to convince him of Peak Oil, just hear him out about how a truly successful man must listen to and heed his own counsel, after carefully considering the facts. That will come in pretty handy to remind him of, later.

I guess what I’m suggesting to you is that you, too, are forced to be your own man and make your own choices that are of a minority opinion. Your father-in-law can tell you how tough that is sometimes, perhaps.

Everyone needs to have a dream. It sucks to struggle to find one in a time of collapses-economic, energy, and environmental ones…but we still have to have some, and they have to be grounded in the future we see happening, not one we wish for or one of exaggerated fears. Your wife knows, by the very changing area around her, that people can destroy the very natural world that provided them an income only a short time before. She perhaps can see that a doubling of the world’s population, at a time of dramatic climate shifts, spells trouble. You may agree with her that while eventually things will “straighten out,” they’ll be “winners” and “losers” before they do. The capacity to accurately assess the direction things are going in will make the difference which one your family ends up as, (although I doubt either of us would agree that “winners” are the best descriptive adjective for those surviving well…)

So, here’s a New Year’s challenge: Paint me an accurate picture of a future you’d want to live in, that includes your wife and kids. Make it 5, 10, and 20 years into the future, and describe what’s different and what changes are going to be required of you. Emphasize how you’ll get the basics, and how energy limits will impact you. The limitations on this requires it to conform to what you know about the three big E’s, and make it as specific as possible. How will the economy change? What environmental changes do you see happening around you? How are people getting around? Where do they get their food? Where are you living and why? Start out each story saying how old you and your family members are, just so you can consider their life span changes (you don’t need to send those to me, that’s just for your own figuring…) Throw in one or two items that would appeal to your wife on some level, and identify these.

Up for the challenge?

Dr. K
‘Peak Shrink’

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I’m working, right now, on H.P.’s dream with him, helping him to clarify and articulate the details.

Stay tuned for the finished product!

Lost Church Building, Not Lost Church

A detour from my normal post, folks. Pardon my ramblings, here.

Lost Church

Got a call early Sunday morning telling us that the church building we attended burned to the ground (and still was burning…)

Now, I know the “church” is the people and everything, and I’m not the sort to believe in “relationships” existing in an institution or structure, instead of in the people inhabiting it, but boy, that church building was 170 years old.

DH and I were invited, and went to the “other” Congregationalist church in town that morning, and heard an outpouring of warmth, shared sadness, and a collection for our congregation. Later that day, we went to a service held in our parish house, at the foot of the hill. The church was on a tiny street, on a hill, and with way, way too little parking for the modern congregation.

The parish house had been filled throughout the day, since early that morning, as people brought food, fed firefighters and police force, and fed our own hungry souls with each other’s company. The place always drew people in times of great sorrow or hardship. A year ago, when we lost electricity in the town for a week, the parish house came alive, offering shelter, a hot meal, and running water. Now, it was one moving creature, with people showing up and leaving, moving furniture around, and rearranging it for the 3 o’clock service. We’d offer food to the firefighters that showed up for a break, and shouted “thank you!” as they left to head back up the hill to the smoldering chars.

Some of us just stood by the entrance to the tiny street that was blocked off by emergency vehicles. We could see what used to be our church there. Some talked to each other in hushed voices, while others just tried to stay close to the minister, as if to gain solace from his physical presence.

The minister is no ordinary religious leader, but a reluctant soul who volunteered a few Sundays when the last minister left. Despite a lack of formal training (which he later made up for) he inspired people so deeply with his words, they begged him to take the reins. He was a shepherd, and a published poet at the time. He was a lumberjack, and now the father of three grown men. He grew up in the city, but made his home in the country years before and never looked back. He’s tall, handsome, with a huge chest and arms, a sensitivity and depth, a humble way and a reassuring manner, that makes him irresistible as a preacher.

It wasn’t until the minister started to recall the items in the church that we lost, that I started to feel the absence.

I mostly missed the memory of how the sunlight showered in the huge windows and spilled onto the pews we sat in, and how I could look out and see the changing seasons. I miss the extreme simplicity of the structure, and the plain wooden pews. I forgot about that grand piano on the pulpit, and that beautiful quilt–the healing quilt–that was blessed by all of us, and went around the congregation to anyone who was ill and needed comfort. I missed the bell, and how you grabbed onto a rope and pulled it. The kids used to love to do that. I liked how dumb it was that it had no bathroom, only fairly recently got something other than two wood-burning stoves to heat it, and had “new” hymnals that were much older than I am. It also had photocopies of a variety of songs that were put into blue binders. Sometimes the songs were missing in some of them, so you had to scramble for another one to see if that had the song in it.

I liked the way that the pews were painted white and brown, and had a section where it was hard to reach, so each one was a bit different–some with more white, some with more brown. I liked the cushions too. They were the ancient maroon “velvet” with buttons, stuffed with old straw and horse hair. It had a podium where the minister would stand, but there was no microphone, except the one for people who were hard of hearing that he’d wear, and sometimes forget to turn off when he sang. The acoustics were great, so there was no need for anything except his deep, clear voice. It had a tin ceiling painted white, and lights placed there in a way that never made the place very bright in the evening. There were three sections for seating, and we always sat on the right as you walked in. There were two doors going in, and one in the back, but only the ‘chickens’ used that back door when they were late.

I remember the first time we were late, and we’d walk in to face the entire congregation, as it was set up with the door and pulpit in front. Afterward, people came up to us saying “don’t feel bad, everyone is late sometimes, and everyone feels that way.” (embarrassed)

The furnace was so noisy, sometimes it had to be shut off, so the minister could be heard. It was a trade-off, because the huge windows (single pane, of course) made it cold in winter, but somehow not too hot in summer. It was that furnace that caused the fire, according to investigators

The last time I was there was at Christmas service, where I sang in the choir. Next, children sang African songs in some African dialect, and were incredibly cute. Afterward, hand-held candles were lit and the houselights went out, and carols were sung by a packed house. I’ll never forget the magic of that night, or how happy I was to sing with a group once again.

It was tiny. It was a classic New England church–bare, without even a Cross. Everyone who entered, regardless of their religion, or lack of religious beliefs, were to feel welcome. As one friend put it: “The church was plain and unadorned. It was the perfect canvas to display the beauty of the people who walked through the door.”

There were no preliminary rules for what you needed to believe when you walked in there. But oddly, there appeared to be an equal rejection of hymn books that had to be “politically correct.” Perhaps that’s why the ones we used were either very VERY current, or from what seemed like the turn of the century.

There was spirit in that building, and it was filled with a history of every person, from the time when those before us would show up in horse-drawn wagons or walk. The next one will see that same phenomenon, if they rebuild, which everyone says will happen, because we have good insurance and a bunch of carpenters just itching to get started. They’ll put the bell back up, too, I’m sure.

A church is not the people–many of our fellow parishioners said that during the 3 o’clock service– when we listened to the guitar and solos, and rocked and swayed and moved that parish hall with a mixture of grief and fellowship. Our collection that afternoon went to the Haitian relief effort and we were reminded of what real loss truly was. After the service, we ate some more, moved among ourselves in the overflowing parish house, (with a bathroom and kitchen) and hugged people.

And although it was “just a building,” I was moved to tears as we sang and swayed and held hands at the end, as we did at every service, awkwardly, since it was build in a day when no one was suppose to touch. Because it was not really just a building, it was a location filled with memories, many more for those who had been there for decades, than for me. People spoke at one point in the service of getting married there and burying their husband there. They spoke of baptizing their children there, and those children growing up and bringing their children to be baptized there. They spoke of memories, and the passing of time, the passing of their lives and the lives of those they chose to live among. A church is just a building, the people are the church, but despite myself, I feel a deep sadness for the loss of that structure, and for all the folks that can no longer relive the memories of their lives that took place in it.

But I’m equally moved by the spirit of togetherness that I’ve seen. One man in town told the minister, ‘I have 100 acres of woods and a sawmill. Tell me what you need.’ With that kind of spirit, there isn’t much we need that can’t be ours.

Grim Newlywed Sees Scary Future for Those He Loves

Dear Peak Shrink,

Please don’t use my name in this post, if that can be avoided.

I learned about Peak Oil a few years ago, but it has only recently dawned on me that it is really for real, really happening, and really not good, especially taken together with all of the other peaks, and environmental degradation. I am fairly hopeless, especially as all of my skills are pretty standard tech civilizational, and because of the topic that seems to be third-rail on some of the more compassionate peak oil forums, which is to say: overpopulation and the inevitable struggle that will ensue between people who are now of good will, as things deteriorate.

This has really caused me a lot of pain, because it is so out of whack with everything I was raised to believe about life. I’ve also been reading some of the Reg Morrison stuff about the evolutionary basis of spirituality/mysticism, and this has left me feeling that the spiritual refuge, which is something I generally lean on, is just a bunch of lies. But I have ordered the book “Sacred Demise” and I’ll see if that has anything to offer me.

All of this is just about trying to cope with this intermediate time–dealing with the anxiety of knowing sh*t is coming before it’s actually hit the fan, but in a moment where you can still walk down the street, drink a bottle of wine, listening to a ballgame–all of the things I love.

I sometimes have moments of terror when I get an intimation of what things will be like when it actually starts to unravel full throttle. I have to confess, and maybe this is why I don’t want my name mentioned most of all, that it makes me wonder how I could kill myself with the least amount of pain and terror, rather than suffer things I can’t even imagine.

In the meantime, I don’t feel like I’m getting much joy out of life, nor to I feel I am either preparing for, or forestalling the inevitable. Some talk-backer on this site referred to this kind of conversation as being like scared ducks pooping in a lake, and that made sense to me. This kind of talk doesn’t seem like it’s building anything, but just trying help us manage the fear and uncertainty. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, necessarily.

It has also occurred to me recently that “feeling good” is a part of the problem–when we are feeling good, we think everything is a-ok. So I feel like I’m not allowing myself to feel good, and even wonder about the efficacy of sharing my feelings with a group like this, that seems like a support group, because if I feel supported then I’ll relax my guard, but then I wonder–why not relax my guard and just drink in some pleasantness while it can still be had? I’d bet anyone dealing with this stuff is familiar with this particular mindf*ck.

The hardest part might be that I got married a month ago, to a wonderful woman who I love very dearly, and who really wants to have children. I love her a lot, and she is the most important person in my life, and it is very clear to me that she has not begun the journey toward seeing how bad things actually are, and does not want to. I have mentioned my concerns to her, and she has found some fairly conventional ways to assert that they are unfounded, though at the same time she does seem willing for me to explore agricultural and foraging information and such. But it has already put a strain on our relationship, which is hard for me to bear. I think, in the end, if we are able (we are in our mid-to-late thirties) we will have a child, because I do not want to lose her, when it comes down to it. And, if we have a child, I will bear the guilt for as long as I live of whatever suffering comes to that child in these times we’re heading towards, because I knew better. So this feels like a crucifixion. I know everyone else must be going through similar shit. It’s all crazy, and feels very unreal. I think we’re going to get more experience of the feel of unreality.

Thanks for listening.

Grim Newlywed

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Dear Grim Newlywed,

I never use names in my post. No worry.

Here are some of my thoughts on what you’ve written, and hopefully you’ll have responses to them. I prefer dialogue rather than monologue, anyway.

I guess I always ask myself specifically what a person is hopeful or hopeless ABOUT. If you are hopeless that the future isn’t going to be looking like the present, that’s sensible. But there is a lot of “bad stuff” that makes this present not so great, anyway. Something has to give, and Peak Oil looks like as good a thing as any.

Hope,as a general concept, is over-rated. If you take action, you need a lot less hope. Seriously assess your current living situation. What did your city or town look like in the 1850’s? How many people? How did they get their food? What work did they do? Then ask yourself whether that place will weather the changes poorly or not. Remember, your assessment is not simply for you and your current lifestyle. You have mentioned having a child. Think about how your grandchildren will live. And the grandchildren of those you love.

It is easy to think in black and white, all or nothing at all terms. Try to think about things over a time-line and to anticipate what changes are next. Your gift of knowing about PO and believing it will make you prophetic to those who either don’t know about this stuff or refuse to believe it. Put into action changes that are both simple, cost little or nothing, and solve multiple problems.

>>This has really caused me a lot of pain, because it is so out of whack with everything I was raised to believe about life.

Yes, the attitude adjustment is a long-ongoing process. I think it takes two years of knowing and believing it, to find a sense of equilibrium.

“overpopulation and the inevitable struggle that will ensue between people who are now of good will, as things deteriorate.”

GN, we will definitely see a shift as people get poorer, and those in the city are forced to move or die an earlier death, perhaps by rising sea levels. But I’ve been inspired by the writings on the Great Depression, and try to draw some lessons from them. I’ve read stories from people who said their parents gave them NOTHING for the holidays, and other stories where the parents gave their child a “dream gift” of refreshing an old doll with horsehair and flour sack clothes. Personal resources are going to be the turning point for how grim things get, I believe.

>>…especially as all of my skills are pretty standard tech civilizational

I can tell by your writings that you are an intelligent man, and what you need to develop new skills is a willingness, motivation (and PO should provide that) and time.

Ask yourself what your ancestors did generations before oil, and see if you have interest in any of that. Take up “hobbies” you enjoy. Pick something quite different than what you do for work. If you work with your mind, try working with your hands. That sort of thing. You may find it a big help to your mental health to learn something new and get physically moving.

>>…this has left me feeling that the spiritual refuge, which is something I generally lean on, is just a bunch of lies.

I don’t know his work, but I like what AA says about Higher Power: You don’t need to believe in a Higher Power, you just have to believe YOUR not IT! I find that tremendous hardship connects people to things that are more meaningful, while prosperity and wealth causes many to feel adrift. As I live among domesticated animals and birds, and grow a garden, I’ve come to believe that the entire planet Earth has profound wisdom and when smart men and women paid attention to it, they learned something.

When I lived in a city, I was so profoundly disconnected from the rhythm of life, and I still, having grown up and lived in cities most of my life, am recovering from civilization, as Chellis Glendinning says. If you feel no relief in your spiritual path at this moment, my hunch is that you are listening to your head and not your heart. The fact that you lay yourself down at night and rise in the morning is not a lie, but it is a miracle of sorts. This civilization we are all a part of is NOT life. It is a brief blip of time in the history of humanity. Our intellects as well as our emotions can remove us from deeper understanding.

I haven’t read “Sacred Demise,” (but I’d like to…) I’ve met Carolyn Baker. She comes from a Jungian background, that inform her politics.

There is a guy who’s been writing about the link between spirituality and evolutionary psychology. I found his writings compelling: Experimental Theology He’s a research psychologist trying to integrate theology with data from the experimental social sciences. He writes interesting stuff. If you do, scroll down the right-hand side of the page until you get to his section: Theology and Evolutionary Psychology. Those articles, to me, were most interesting.

>>it makes me wonder how I could kill myself with the least amount of pain and terror, rather than suffer things I can’t even imagine.

I think you should make a serious examination of your assumptions here, especially in light of the fact that you are considering having a child. You have many, many options available to you to mitigate the impact of what is coming in your own life and in the lives of those you care about. You can’t do everything. You aren’t a miracle worker…but you can make intelligent, rational choices based on what you know and what you predict is likely to happen. To not take action is insanity. If you remain frozen, and you don’t act on what you know to be true, you may feel increasingly bummed out. If you keep focusing on suicide, you need to get some help, GN, from someone trained to help you get some perspective. People who are unsuccessful at killing themselves are glad they didn’t do it. If that thought is bouncing around as more than an extremely occasional idea, please get some help.

>>This kind of talk doesn’t seem like it’s building anything, but just trying help us manage the fear and uncertainty.

Here’s the point of what I do: Yes, bad things are coming. Yes, it will be an extremely rough ride. Now, do you believe yourself and start doing something? Or do you ignore what you believe and feel anxious and upset? Managing the fear is not enough. You have to DO SOMETHING. You have to take ACTION. You have to take yourself as seriously as a heart attack. You can’t get caught up in whether this is the “right” or “best” thing to do. Start with small steps, and avoid drastic life changes without the counsel of people you trust.

And you have to have enough perspective to realize that things unfold, at varying rates. You have to have some clue as to what the signs and symptoms MEAN. If you ignore what you know to be true, you are going to feel crazy, and perhaps start acting that way. “Not acting crazy” in this sense, means removing yourself from the tracks when you hear the train coming.

As far as the ‘talk-backers’ go, 5% of the population are sociopathic or sadistic and they enjoy inducing paralyzing fear in other people. Besides, ducks and geese poop in the lake to lighten their load to fly. That’s why they digest things so quickly, to be able to take off when they need to. If you are scared, you might want to do make some movement of your own. Perhaps that’s what you are doing in writing to me. I agree with someone who wrote on the LATOC forum that we’re got mostly Armchair Doomers out there, and some have rather elaborate fantasy lives, filled with excitement, revenge, hot babes that they “get” with a can of beans and a toothless smile…that sort of thing. Don’t let them scare you.

>It has also occurred to me recently that “feeling good” is a part of the problem–when we are feeling good, we think everything is a-ok.

Now you are on to something. When we feel good, we can continue to act “normal” and continue to buy and get into debt and don’t notice how dramatically different things are now then they were 10 years ago. But feeling good isn’t actually the problem. We can “feel” good or “feel” gloomy, but these are just emotions that exist on a bodily level. Do we become brain-dead when we “feel good” or do we just enjoy the good sensations? Do we ignore what we believe to be true, deep down, or do we just go on auto-pilot? Feel good or feel gloomy, but take action, then self-correct. If you find that you just bought a lot of crapola over the holidays, return it! Or stop buying now!

>>So I feel like I’m not allowing myself to feel good, and even wonder about the efficacy of sharing my feelings with a group like this, that seems like a support group…

You can tell how serious you are by the people you talk to about which sorts of feelings. For example, if your mother was all happy about you getting married, and your father was against it, and you talk to Mom, it suggests that you want to feel better about the marriage. If you talk to Dad, you may be looking for the doubter’s take. Notice who you talk to about what, to get some clue about what types of opinions or support you might be wanting.

When you talk here, you are talking to people who are likely to share a particular set of stories and beliefs. They are a rare group, as groups go. If you said “It’s all going down!” to a group of dentists or engineers, you’d get completely different feedback, especially if they were expecting their first child! No one here is going to say “It’s crazy to worry about the future!”

>>because if I feel supported then I’ll relax my guard…

My friend calls that need to keep up her guard “fresh hate.” I think you mean that you need to stay motivated to actually DO something, instead of just talking about it, and YOU DO!

>>…why not relax my guard and just drink in some pleasantness while it can still be had? I’d bet anyone dealing with this stuff is familiar with this particular mindf*ck.

They are quite familiar with it, as am I. So what you might be missing is that right now, you can do everything you need to do the “easier” way (but not as easily as you might have four years ago). The longer you wait to start changing things, the rougher things will get.

Timing IS important. When resources are abundant, you can get quite a bit done. When gas is $4 a gallon, you start feeling the limitations…or when you lose your job. Drink in pleasantness, by all means. That is your right as a human being on this earth. But don’t just do that. Recognize that you are at a unique point in history, and next year you’ll have less to work with than you do this year. Just ask the person who was “thinking” of moving their stock portfolio, but didn’t. How do they feel?

>>The hardest part might be that I got married a month ago, to a wonderful woman who I love very dearly, and who really wants to have children. I love her a lot, and she is the most important person in my life…

I am very happy for you. Having a good spouse is essential in surviving what’s coming. But you have a big job to do. If she loves you as much as you love her, you must see eye-to-eye on this very important matter of the future. Your shared vision and goals for the future will bring your house in harmony. A divided vision and working at cross-purposes will bring nothing but heart-ache.

>>it is very clear to me that she has not begun the journey toward seeing how bad things actually are, and does not want to. I have mentioned my concerns to her, and she has found some fairly conventional ways to assert that they are unfounded, though at the same time she does seem willing for me to explore agricultural and foraging information and such.

It is scary to face what you have been facing. You love her and don’t want to scare her. But she must, if you are to have a harmonious life, be willing to investigate adequately. It is not enough for you to be the “preparer.” It isn’t enough for her to allow you to be the “eccentric.” On the other hand, don’t expect her to want to sign up for your future if you tell her “We’ll be lying on a gutter eating our own flesh!” She’d be silly to want to join you in that vision. So, your job, if you choose to accept it, is to outline what you see calmly and rationally to her.

Outline what the limitations and positives are, and what steps you think have to be taken to avert the bad things you see coming. In other words, you have to envision a future worth living in, but that’s only the first step: You have to figure out how to go step-by-step into that future WITH her. And you have to help her to understand that she’ll be giving up a lot to change her lifestyle, and that you understand and sympathize with that. And she will. And you will. And she is the other side of your ambivalence helping you to stay the same – frozen with indecision. I’ll have more to say about this stuff later.*

>>But it has already put a strain on our relationship, which is hard for me to bear.

This strain will, unfortunately, be the first of many. Be clear about how you want to be and act towards her when you disagree about something, and remain true to that way. But understand that you do neither her NOR you a favor by allowing her to be the bright side, while you remain the dark side. You need her optimism. All is NOT lost for those with the courage and wisdom to act. She needs your vision of a future that YOU find worth living in. She’ll be willing to tolerate the pain if it will lead to positive growth, not just more pain.

>>I think, in the end, if we are able (we are in our mid-to-late thirties) we will have a child, because I do not want to lose her, when it comes down to it.

That is a popular, but terrible reason to be a father. If a woman told you that she was going to have a child in order to “keep her man” would you applaud? I doubt it. You’d say any man who’d pressure her into having a child isn’t worth keeping. If you make a conscious decision to bring a child into this world of strife, you had better be fully prepared to provide a decent future for them.

>>And, if we have a child, I will bear the guilt for as long as I live of whatever suffering comes to that child in these times we’re heading towards, because I knew better. So this feels like a crucifixion.

It is a crucible, not a crucifixion. It is a trial, pressure that will either crack you or transform you. I hope the latter. If you believe yourself, if you actually DO know better, than I’m curious to know just what you plan to do. Is your plan to keep those children and grandchildren safe and happy, or face into your conscience and work with your wife on a different (childless or perhaps adoption) plan for the future and suffer her deep disappointment at not having a biological child?

>>I know everyone else must be going through similar sh*t.

You are definitely not alone in this,, and that’s why you want your story heard. You want to know that other people are dealing with this and are working through it. You want to know that this is something a person CAN work through…that it is something a marriage can survive.

>>It’s all crazy, and feels very unreal. I think we’re going to get more experience of the feel of unreality.

Actually, GN, I think the opposite. I think we’ll increasingly have the feeling of things getting very very real. The only “unreality” will be the stories they tell us on the television news. These will be increasingly out of whack with what our own lives and the lives of people around us tell us. That’s why we all need to Shut that TV OFF!

I am interested in your response to what I’ve written, and in knowing more about the details of your situation, if you care to share.

If not, I’ll thank you now for this most interesting letter. I’m sure it will resonate with many of my readers, especially the marital issues piece.

I wish you great wisdom and strength in the future.

Best,

Peak Shrink

P.S. Baseball doesn’t need fossil fuel. Are you on a team?

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* I’m working on, what I believe to be, an important post on marriage between what I call “Convinced Spouses” and “Skeptical Spouses.” I will outline the types of issues that are common, to this type of marriage, but this post will do more. It will attempt to describe the sorts of emotional shifts that need to happen in both people for healing and reconciliation to begin. It will be directed at the general reader, as well as the professional couple’s therapist.

I’m inviting people who may be interested in reviewing my drafts, and commenting on them, to contact me. I’m particularly interested in reviewers who find themselves in that sort of relationship dynamic (Convinced/Skeptical). If you’d like to be a reviewer of this piece (and don’t worry, I’ll be hitting up the ‘usual suspects’) write to me at peakshrink AT peakoilblues DOT com.

Here’s a sample:

Strained Social Networks

If new Peak Oil social networks are created, these prove to be equally “alien territory” for the Skeptical Spouse. If they found one person full of “doom and gloom” talk, now they must tolerate a hornet’s nest full of them…