Most of you remember the old Star Trek crew, right? How old would you guess them to be? Kirk is maybe late 30’s early forty’s right? Spock (okay, in human age, now) is perhaps a few years older? Now let’s look at the new crew:
New Star Trek Crew
First, I thought to myself, oh no, this is all wrong. These kids are way WAY to young to run a space ship, and ‘boldly go where no man has gone before.’
Then, I re-considered.
In fact, I think that’s where most of this generation is headed anyway. Perhaps some people have gone into a future world of darkness, but not these dudes. And the new frontier?
A poverty-drenched world with few resources.
They’ll need bravery and courage. They’ll need the ability to deal swiftly with the unexpected. They’ll need to rely on each other when surrounded by alien forces. And, they’ll need knowledge and a good memory when they can’t replace their laptops and ipods, or perhaps plug them in whenever they need them. They’ll need all of these things, or they won’t make it. And these new warriors will be grounded, hopefully mentally as well as physically. The only flying they’ll be doing, will be with drugs or on a natural high.
I salute you, this generation! I wish you the capacity to reject the “requirements” of your elders and make lemonade with the lemons we left you. Never believe you can’t create great things from fewer and fewer resources, and never, never leave a buddy behind on an alien planet.
In this post, I’d like to look at parallels between events that happened during the Great Depression, and events we see happening around us today. Too often as events unfold, they appear to be isolated, and disconnected. It is only in retrospect that we see the interwoven framework.
The first section may be more familiar to you, as I will look at similarities in unemployment, eviction and homelessness during the 1930’s and today. But in the second section, I was surprised to learn how similar the psychological, social and emotional impacts are between our Great Depression and theirs. In the 30’s we saw economic hardship impact access to adequate nutrition, and health care, opening up an avenue for increased disease (such as diarrhea and infectious disease), malnutrition, and death. We might assume that these deaths were from suicides, homicides and increasing rates of domestic violence, alcoholism, and a host of other issues. But few of us pause to ask whether people made different decisions about whether to marry or divorce and whether we are making these same choices today. I was surprised to find that communities were more open to allowing gambling as a new stream of tax revenues and that increased gambling increase the risk of suicide. We can assume that rates of domestic violence, and infant mortality increased, back then, and even bank robberies, but are we seeing an increase in these things now? Read on. I will examine each of these in turn, in Section II, and I think the answers will surprise you too.
First, the framework:
SECTION ONE: UNEMPLOYMENT/EVICTION/HOMELESSNESS Unemployment: Then and Now
At the start of the Great Depression, unemployment was at 8.9%, reaching a height of almost 25% in 1933 before dropping back. This was in the age before statistical funny-business.
To compare these “Depression Era” unemployment figures with today’s, we must adjust these official figures to “re-enter” what Shadow Government Statistics calls “discouraged workers.” A discouraged worker was one who was willing, able and ready to work, but had given up looking because there were no jobs to be had. They began to “disappear” from official unemployment rolls, during the Clinton Administration, as part of the “Clinton Miracle.”
The numbers in the paragraphs add these discouraged workers back into the unemployment figures, just as they were included during the Great Depression. It gives us a much more serious view of our predicament:
Today in the US, official unemployment rates in May 2009 are highest in Michigan, at 14.1 (26.1 ) percent, followed by Oregon at 12.4 (24.4 ) percent, Rhode Island and South Carolina tied at 12.1 (24.1 ) percent. The national unemployment rate for May was 9.4 (21.4) percent. In contrast, for most of my lifetime, unemployment hovered around 5%.
The velocity of change is equally stunning. Three-quarters of a million Californians lost their jobs in the last twelve months according to official government statistics. Almost a quarter million in Texas. Eighteen other states each had 100,000 more jobless citizens over the last year.
To get a sense for the magnitude of the problem, during the Great Depression, 13 million people became unemployed. Today, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the total number of Americans who are not working full-time but ought to be, is about 22 million. Of course we are a bigger country, but still, these figures give you a sense for the sheer magnitude of the problem–the number of people who are out of work and need help.
The per capita income in the US fell from about $700 in 1929 to some $400 in 1933. Parallels commonly seen today are families losing one full-time worker, or each earner being forced to take a one-day pay cut per week. These families see dramatic cuts in income, while technically remaining “employed.”
Obama’s stimulus package offering youth summer jobs is the worst kind of offense, as it re-directs employment counselors away from helping adult applicants, and focuses this same money on hiring counselors to help kids secure minimum wage jobs. Reason? Teens will spend that cash in the malls, while the adults, desperate to pay for basic necessities, won’t provide enough of a “stimulus” (private communications.) Frightening, but true.
Home Building/Buying
Home building dropped by 80% between the years 1929 and 1932. Today, sales of new houses are more than 70 percent below their 2005 levels. In May of 2002 we saw a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.73 million units. Six years later, that adjusted annual rate was 532,000, a 70% drop. Forty-eight percent of that drop happened in the last year.
Homelessness
During the Great Depression, there were two million homeless people migrating across the United States, and in 1932, 273,000 families were evicted from their homes. Today, 1 million or more foreclosures have happened in this year alone. Historically, in the last five years, homelessness figures have ranged from 3/4 million to 3.5 million, including 1.5 million children. One thing is certain today: the number of people, particularly families, seeking beds in homeless shelters has increased dramatically, from double to a even a ten-fold jump in some areas. There are currently 2,104 Homeless Shelters, and if these contain even 300 beds each (and most of them don’t contain a fraction of that number), it barely makes a dent in supplying someplace for homeless people to sleep. Meanwhile, one in nine homeowners nationwide is either behind in their mortgage payments or their family homes are in foreclosure. If there are 75.4 million homeowners (2006 figure), that’s 7.5 million people in trouble, compared to less than one quarter of a million in the 1930’s (3.3%) This rate as reached dramatic heights in Michigan where one of every 137 homes is in foreclosure.
Public Protests to Stop Evictions
Protesters are staging eviction blockades reminiscent of the citizen resistance movements of the 1930s. Organized community protest with support of local sheriffs are occurring once again. Sheriffs in Illinois and Michigan made headlines when they simply stopped carrying out eviction orders on tenants. A Florida police officer asked a lawyer there, if he too, could refuse. “They see the human misery firsthand,” the lawyer says. “It’s civil disobedience from within the system. That’s kind of odd.”
“Foreclosure is not the end of the process; it’s the beginning of stage 2,” says Steve Meacham, a community organizer with City Life/Vida Urbana, a nonprofit that has orchestrated 11 blockades in Boston recently, nine of them successful. Activists are changing the rules of an overwrought system. With record-high homelessness, it makes no sense to force people out of their homes and into the street and these protests are designed to stop it.
Renters Pay Rent and Are Evicted Anyway Twenty percent of homes facing foreclosures are rentals, “[and some estimate] 40%of those facing eviction nationwide, and 70% in some cities, are renters who paid their bills>. Their landlords, without a word to anyone, did not.” And the pace is accelerating: Total foreclosure filings – which include default papers, auction sale notices and repossessions – reached 803,489 in the first quarter, according to a report released recently by RealtyTrac. We’ve seen a 17% jump in one month from February-March 2009 – and a 46% jump since March 2008.
SECTION TWO: SOCIAL AND MENTAL HEALTH EFFECTS
How does this joblessness and homelessness impact people’s emotional and physical welfare? I will look at current rates of suicide, increase in gambling, domestic violence, infant mortality and foster placements because of neglect and child abuse, the rising need for food stamps, the fall in marriage and divorce rates, extended family cohabitation, and finally, crime-particularly bank robbery and shoplifting. I will compare each of these to events of the last Great Depression.
Suicide
While actual suicide statistics lag, and the most recent nationwide are from 2005, National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, the only national 24/7 suicide prevention hotline, saw a 75% increase in calls between April 2007 and April 2009. An informal survey of 10 call centers revealed that one in four callers reported financial distress as one of his or her problems.
Suicide calls to the crisis line climbed 21 percent according to one Dallas local report. In Tampa, there was a 122 percent increase in calls, according to another report. In Oregon, one professional said “It’s the worst it’s ever been.” Charlotte, North Carolina police reported a 55 percent increase in suicide attempts over the previous year, and a local hospital saw a nine percent increase in patients who’d attempted or considered suicide. For every suicide, there are probably 100 attempts according to this news story.
Suicide rates are between two and four times higher for people who can’t find a job than for people who are employed, according to the American Association of Suicidology.
In New Jersey, where crisis calls have increased 20% over last year, workers say: “So many more of our callers are distraught over financial, employment or housing issues and desperately need our support… For so many people it’s difficult to talk to those closest to them about personal problems, fearing criticism or rejection. With issues of unemployment or financial stress, there is often additional shame.”
Talk to the one in four around you that are facing economic hardship, and let them express their frustrations, fear, shame and self-blame. You may be saving a life.
Gambling
The Great Depression led to a much greater legalization of gambling. The antigambling mood changed as tremendous financial distress gripped the country, especially after the stock market crash of 1929. Legalized gambling was looked upon as a way to stimulate the economy…In 1933, Michigan, New Hampshire, Ohio, and California legalized parimutuel betting. The California Legislature adopted a statute in 1933 referred to as the Horse Racing Act. The statutes took effect upon adoption by the voters of an amendment to the Constitution in June of 1933. During the 1930’s, 21 states brought back racetracks….Nevada legalized most forms of gambling in the State in 1931.
Lottery sales are up. Of the 42 states with lotteries, 22 set sales records last year, including New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. They’ll do even better in 2009. But will the gamblers?
The suicide rate among compulsive gamblers is more than 20 times higher than in the general population, according to the crisis center. As during the Great Depression, some people facing financial troubles (and State Governments as well) turn to gambling as a possible salvation. In fact, those who help with compulsive gambling problems are seeing an increase in requests for help. Calls to the 1-800 BETS OFF helpline have increased 41 percent from FY 2002 to FY 2008.
Domestic Violence
Florida saw an almost 40 percent jump in demand last fall, in those seeking help at domestic violence centers. Experts say it is related to the worsening economy. Florida’s Department of Children & Families Secretary George Sheldon calls the situation “the worst I’ve seen in years.” Rhode Island has recently seen a 25 percent increase in felony-level domestic violence crimes. In better times, more than 53,000 women, men, and children across the country received services from domestic violence programs, half of them children. Back then, more than 14% were turned away because of lack of resources. Today, as the collapse continues, “violence programs face a trio of economic factors – cuts in federal funding, increased demand for services, and decreased private donations as people lose their jobs or see a downturn in their personal finances.” (op. cit) Reports of increased need trickle in from various parts of the country.
Suffer the Little Children: “Michigan is swamped with foster kids.”
Infants and children are dramatically impacted by economic collapse, as well. One of the dirty little secrets of economic crashes, as in the Great Depression, is that underweight babies die from a host of problems in the first year of life, and mothers don’t receive pre-natal care. Today, one County in Michigan reports an 18% increase in the infant death rate since 2000, although that is well below the state average. Over 8% of the births in this area, are low birth weight babies compared to 36% of babies born in Michigan’s poorest communities, resulting in increased infant mortality and increasind the risk for developmental delays and chronic disease. This was before thing started to get really bad. Children in need of foster placement has increased 35% as well. In Milwaukee, infant deaths outpace homicide, at a rate of 120 to 71. African-American children in that city has less chance of living beyond his or her first birthday than an infant in Albania, Sri Lanka or Thailand. In Virginia, infant mortality rates claims the lives of seven times more children each year than car accidents do. Tennessee’s preterm birth rate increased 13 percent from 1995 to 2005. Expect all of those figures to continue to rise as the collapse worsens. We had expected, by this point in our development as a nation, we would have gotten infant mortality rates down to around 4%.
Food Stamps
Started on May 16, 1939 and ended in the spring of 1943, when “unmarketable food surpluses and widespread unemployment–no longer existed.” At its peak, 4 million participated in this period. Food aid returned, however, and by August 2008, participation had reached an all-time (non-disaster) high of 29 million people per month.
Today, one in ten Rhode Island residents are receiving food stamps (SNAP), well over half of them had never before applied for assistance of any kind. Still, poverty advocates still claim 35 percent of eligible Rhode Islanders are not enrolled. “…There are a lot more people now who are saying, ‘I never would have imagined I’d be in this situation, but here I am.’ ”
But while 10% of Rhode Island’s population receives aid, Oregon is over 15% and South Carolina follows close behind. Almost 11% of the US population is currently receiving food stamps, and this is increasing at a rate of almost 2% a month; we’ve seen an 18.6% increase in the past year.
But what are benefits like? The average weekly benefits nationwide average $22.24. In Oregon, for example, where the average family size is 3, the average benefits provide $6.89 per person for the week. These benefit figures include the additional funds provided by the Obama administration.
Marriage and Divorce
From 1929 to 1933, the marriage rate fell by 22 percent and the divorce rate dropped by 25 percent. What about now?
“Although marriage rates (measured as a proportion of the population) have been sliding in recent years, the recession is expected to exacerbate this trend. Couples living together before marriage are expected to put off the big day and ride out the tough economic times. This will see marriage rates decline by a further 2.8 percent during the year, compared to an estimated decline of 6.0 percent in 2008.”
“Young couples appear to be deferring the decision until times are more certain” says one UK reporter.
If you do marry, however, you’ll find it cheaper to do so. The average cost of a wedding dropped by over 20 percent in 2008 and a further 8 percent decline in costs is expected this year.
Nationally, divorce lawyers saw a 37 percent decline in 2008, but in states that have not yet been affected by the collapse, like Utah, divorce statistics are unaffected.
In some cases, the economy is forcing divorced couples to live together, or postpone the divorce legally, but continue to share residents and living expenses. “They can’t afford to live separately. They can’t afford separate residences. More and more people, this is what they’re doing, and this is awful because they’re roommates now with their ex-spouse,” said one divorce attorney. Horrible or not, family togetherness now, as it was during the last Great Depression, will become increasingly the norm.
Let’s Live Together
Also during the Great Depression, many young people could not afford to leave their parents and start their own households. Today, the number of multigenerational houses has increased from 5 million in 2000 to 6.2 million in 2008. In a recent AARP poll of people ages 18 and older, about a quarter were living with their parents or in-laws; and about one in seven were living with a sibling. About 15 percent of the 1,002 people polled said they’re at “some risk” of having to move back into their parents’ home; about a third of those because of job loss.
To pay the mortgage or avoid foreclosure, extended families are also moving in together, just as their grandparents did. “This is an important time for family to help, the way the housing market is going. Our story is a testament to how families should come together to help with a mortgage.” said one young publicist.
Crime
From 1930 to 1932, in the early years of the Great Depression and nearing the end of Prohibition, a spike in crime swept the country because of turf battles between bootleggers and disorderly conduct among their customers.
With the end of Prohibition in 1933, however, crime rates began to drop. More people were spending time at home, making it more difficult for people to commit burglaries, in that era.
Today, the thievery remains centered on shoplifting, one profession that appears unaffected by the economic downturn. Organized crime appears to be increasingly dominating this once solo occupation, however.
Conclusion
Only when we line up the past along side the present can we begin to see stark similarities in the hardships of our grandparents and great grandparents to our own lives today. Then, as is the case today, nobody thought of themselves as living through “The Great Depression.” Instead, they saw a job loss or an eviction as a personal, not a social problem. They felt ashamed. They hid their problems. Some, however were able to engage in public protests that demanded action and acted on their own behalf and that of their own community.
If we remain frozen in our own economic hardship, (an understandable but deadly pre-occupation) we will lack the objectivity to move ourselves into a position that offers us maximum flexibility and options. Most of us, like in the last great economic collapse, will feel bewildered and frightened by our situation and the events that will swirl around or over us. Some, fully cognizant of their place in history, will show true innovation, mitigation, and community leadership. Knowledge is power.
I hope this article, in some small ways, encourages you to begin to act now, and not to wait for this collapse to be televised or only understood in a historical context. It’s happening now. It’s happening all around you, to you and your neighbors. Stand up, take heart and take action.
********** Resources
Feeling suicidal? Most people who fail to kill themselves are glad they are now alive. The phone number for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-TALK (8255)
Have you turned to gambling to solve your financial problems? Get free confidential help here.
Need a homeless shelter? You can find a national directory here.
Need extra money for food? You can buy produce plants with food stamps. Learn how to enroll here… and don’t be put off if you aren’t eligible on paper. Often there are loopholes that aren’t in print. Call up and see.
Don’t want to be foreclosed on quietly? Kick up some dust and find some good ideas here.
Perhaps it was the lateness of the hour, wasting, as I did, vast amounts of time (as did my valuable colleague and friend) hunting down invading spam. But as I opened up my email, and followed the instructions, I laughed until tears appeared across my face. I wish you the same:
It reads:
1. Go to Amazon.com.
2. In the search bar, type in “Three wolf moon t-shirt.” All you have to do, really, is type “th” and it will pop up as an option. It’s that popular.
3. Select the “Three Wolf Moon “Official” T-Shirt 100% Cotton Short Sleeve Shirt KIDS – TEENS & ADULTS.” It should be the first one available, with a rating of approximately 4.5 stars.
4. Scroll down to the customer reviews.
5. Begin reading.
For fun, select any of the other tshirts listed under “Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought” and repeat steps 4 and 5.
After considerable work on the part of my Guardian Site Angel, we were able to rid this site of the evil scourge of Spammers. If I accidentally erased your sign-in information, my apologies. Please sign in again.
I tried to eliminate names like Xaa228myviagrabuynow.spamnet.com, but I’m human. Please just register again. Hopefully, all comments will be included under “Wordpress” if I deleted your user sign-in. If you care, let me know and I’ll re-link your proper name with your comments.
Man, there are some tasks I won’t mind giving up in the fossil fuel depleted future…
I’ll be on the radio today, at 4:00 EST, 1 pm (Pacific Coast Time) KWMR – Community Radio for West Marin West Marin Matters – Post Carbon
90.5 FM – Point Reyes Station
89.9 FM – Bolinas
Outside signal area streaming live at www.kwmr.org
Bing & Bernie will be interviewing Andre Angelantoni and I on preparing for Peak Oil & Collapse psychologically, mentally, and spiritually, and in practical ways, such as raising chickens, food storage, raising food, etc.
Outside signal area streaming live HERE, if you don’t get a chance to listen today.
I asked some friends last night what it would take for them to feel, emotionally, that things are really as bad as they intellectually know them to be. The answers were revealing. They told me “when other people were as worried as they are.” In other words, when the media finally admits just how bad things are, and other people, watching the media, finally come to believe it.
But the economy, according to media, is like a Bobo doll, all full of air. When actual world events knock it down (Bam! Bam!), it bounces right back up again, with the same smiley face.
Sockaroo!: A loss of forty percent on your pensions, and Bobo bounces up.
Bam! Bam!: Trillions of dollars created out of thin air, and Bobo comes back.
Pow! Pow! Right in the nose! Boom!: GM goes belly-up, (after the bankers are paid off,) but things are looking up!
Stay down! Stay down!: Dollar tumbles but look! You can’t keep a good currency down!
Fly away! Fly away!: Gold rises, but wait! It’s fallen again, so no worries!
I think people are still looking for some “sign” from the media that this is “really it” and there is no sign, or rather, nothing of significance will be made from the hundreds of signs that do exist. It’s a Bobo Economy. It always bounces back.
At what point do we all realize that the nature of the media is to talk about the bouncing moves of the Bobo, and to encourage us to ignore noticing that, in the end, the economy is always left standing? We Must Offer Hope! Reality is too Scary for the Viewers! Prosperity is just around the corner! Twas always thus!
It isn’t BAD news that we’ve lost over 300,000 jobs, it is GOOD news, because it is a sign that the “recession” is lifting. Ah! See that! Oil prices are soaring so we MUST be getting out of the recession.
We go from “no recession” to one that began in Dec 07. But no worries: Now that we know, it’s almost over!
It’s not flattering to think of ourselves watching the screen, and then mimic the actions we see, but when economic markets control the news, all roads lead to a buying opportunity, rosy consumerism and a Bobo Economy.
“You are not keeping them, of course, to make or even to save money. You are not keeping them as pets. You are keeping them for the simple pleasure of their company and the beauty and tastiness of their eggs and their meat. You are raising them because you wish to strike a modest blow for the liberation of the chicken–and indeed, of all living things on earth.”
Charles Daniel & Page Smith
They survive in all kinds of climates. ** They live comfortably in all kinds of shelters. ** A few birds take only a few moments to care for every day. ** You can buy them for a few dollars each. ** The taste of a fresh egg is not comparable to a store-bought one. ** They prepare a garden bed by digging it up and fertilizing it, while feeding themselves. ** Watching them was the first television show. **They are completely sustainable: When they are done laying, you can eat them. ** The cost of their food is ‘chicken feed.’ ** You make good friends when you distribute extra eggs.
In 90 minutes, you can learn all you need to know to get started: Early registration ends this Saturday, May 30th. The course is $29. Learn more and register here.
Chickens 101: A Beginner’s Course in Keeping Chickens
Have you ever thought about keeping chickens but didn’t know where to start? Chickens 101 will help you decide by providing you with all the basic information you’ll need, including:
· Benefits of keeping chickens
· How much time it takes
· Handling fresh eggs
· Choosing the right breed
· Raising and feeding chicks
· Whether you should keep a rooster
· The perfect chicken house
· Children and chickens
Chickens 101 is an introductory course that gives you the facts to help you decide whether chickens are for you and the confidence to pick the perfect hen.
Carleen Madigan has edited an accessible gem of a book for those who would like to expand their food production at home, but are a overwhelmed at the thought of how to go about it. Delving into the treasure-trove at Storey Press, she’s provided a fabulous buffet of all of the many choices available to those who want to learn more.
In under 350 pages, The Backyard Homestead gives us the basics of organic fruit and vegetable gardening, growing herbs, nut trees, seed-saving, how to raise an impressive variety of livestock– chickens, pigs, sheep, goats, cattle and more–homegrown grains, foraging, canning, pruning. You name it, it’s in there!
You can see charming photos and illustrations of various animal and bird breeds, scenes teaching you to landscape with edible plants, herbal illustrations and more. What can you put on a small suburban or urban plot? She gives you the lay-outs from 1/10th of an acre up to one-half of an acre, and a breakdown of the crops and how to lay them out, and what to plant in rotation.
In a time of changing climates, she also teaches you when to set your crops into the soil, using “planting phenology.” When do you plant the beans? “When the apple trees drop their petals.” The calendar might not save us, but other trees and plants will provide us definite dates!
Madigan is a legendary cook, and here you’ll learn how to make simple cheeses, dry meats into Jerky, or make your own sausage. If you want to grow grains, she’ll teach you to toss in some hops and brew your own beer, or put in some grapes and make your own wine. If you have a sweet-tooth, there’s a section on bee-keeping and making maple syrup as well.
No book this size can provide you with all you need to know. For example, she shies away from a “how to” course on butchering. I also might disagree with her experts on what constitutes a “meat” verses a “dual-purpose” chicken, but these are small points, best left for an entire book this size devoted strictly to raising chickens. What this book does well, and it does it VERY well, is to give the reader an overview of nearly all of your homestead choices, and lets you decide what strikes your fancy.
She also makes no assumptions about her readers. Her suggestion for how to incorporate grains into the diets “of people who still think oats grow in little Os and corn and wheat grow in squares inside red-checkered boxes:”
“Do it the same way you’d approach a big black bear — very carefully…No one, especially the children, should fear that if they don’t like the wheat soup, they’ll get no supper at all.”
But she’ll show you how to winnow that wheat, provide 15 different herbs that make delicious tea, and bake a basic bread if you’ve never done it before.
Its a wonderfully accessible book that provides a lot of information in a friendly and easy to read format. It’s just the sort of reassuring book to take to bed with you, when you’ve just learned that you have to “do something!” and aren’t sure what that “something” is.
Enjoy!
Carleen Madigan (2009) The Backyard Homestead: Produce all the food you need on just a quarter acre! by Storey Publishing.
For those who have no time, here’s what this post says: The best that you can do, when facing our energy future is to grab hold of yourself, calm yourself down, and realize that there is no solution, NO SOLUTION, that is going to bring you out the other side in exactly the same condition you went in. This, dear readers, is DOOM. On the other hand, we have no room for indefinite GLOOM…
Readers of my site have looked into this issue, and they are anxious. “Average folks” who say “I’ll just have to think about that energy stuff tomorrow” are the norm, and we’re not, and we know it. We’re the “weirdos” who fret and worry and try and do something different. And the more the “average folks” think someone–a politician, a CEO, an inventor–is just going to make all of this go away, the more anxious my readers become. The Peak Shrink
So, for those of you who have wandered over from The American Prospect, after reading the article “The Peak Shrink,” welcome. We know we have a dwindling oil supply, and even the most hopeful Panglossians among us are reining in their projections of how long we have before we’ll be experiencing the pinch of peak oil “shoes” that no longer fit us, (and the replacement pair we can’t afford…)
This site states one painful fact: The closer you look into this issue, the more disturbing the facts become. The more upset you get as you research, the easier it is to stop researching and take a strong shot of something and turn on the TV.
Most people prefer to tackle problems with easy solutions. But the tough ones, like this one, really suck because every avenue we walk down in search of solutions (surely alternative energy will… oh, I guess not…But hydrogen…never mind…*) wakes us up to the limitations and the very VERY long lead time we’ve got to have in order to avoid unimaginable hardship. You don’t re-build a country’s railway system or modernize seaports overnight. The president allocated $8 billion in the $787 billion economic stimulus spending package for a start on establishing high-speed rail corridors nationwide. That’s less than one percent of the total, and woefully inadequate for the task.
And you don’t change the thinking of an entire world population just because “it makes sense” or “it’s science.”
If I were a politician, I’d hate the topic of Peak Oil. I’d want to get as far away from that topic as I could, because if I tackled it directly, I’d have to use a political swear word: sacrifice.
We sent a man to the moon, can’t we solve Peak Oil? “Solve” is the wrong word. “Manage” is closer to it. The lives of our grammar school children will look remarkably different by the time they are aged. You have children? You have grandchildren? And, if you’re not the gambling type, that likes to look on the bright side when the consequences are dire,your life will not look the same in twenty years. We don’t gamble that our house won’t burn down. We buy fire insurance, just in case. But we resent the politician who tells us that we need “energy insurance” because this source of fuel is definitely coming to an end, and no one (except the true nut jobs) deny it.
The mind-shift is going to be huge, even if we have 20 years until the peak of oil production. Unless we are a nation of drunken sailors out on leave, we don’t demand an “increase in production” so that we can really enjoy ourselves on one hell of a drunk, now. Here’s why: We need that oil to transition ourselves. We can party now, and be left hung over and needy later, or we can take what’s left and use it to create a very different energy world.
We want our energy cake and eat it to. We want a solution that keeps everything just the way it is now, but somehow switches the energy source. We don’t want to use up that energy cake for a brighter future, though, if it means we have to cut back today. Or at least most of us, including me, don’t unless we don’t see an alternative. I’ve done my own research and I don’t. Now you get to investigate. Or not.
Put another way: You’ve been running up your credit card because you’re going to lose your job soon, and you know it. What have you been buying? Courses to retrain yourself for a new job? Travel money to interview across the country? Nope, you’ve been buying a massage, that great “little black dress” you’ve always wanted, and a down payment on a new car.
“Losing my job is going to be stressful” we say. “I want to feel better.” Of course we do. Unfortunately, after the job loss, you’re now buying food and paying your mortgage with the credit card, and soon it’s going to be maxed out. We’ve got only a bit more on this energy credit card, folks, and whether we spend it doing the ’same ol’ same ol’ or we spend it ramping up so we can ramp down our energy needs, the choice is ours. We need oil to build solar panels and nuclear power plants. We need it to build “high efficiency” anything.
To get through what we’re facing requires us to think twenty years ahead, so if the optimists are right, we better get to work. If they are wrong, and we’ve past peak last year, uh-oh.
But let’s not talk about the worst of it right now. Let’s be optimistic, for a moment, and say we have twenty years before we’ve hit the peak. What would a forward-thinking leader really tell us? What would he or she do?
I have no clue what they’d tell people without panicking them or making them really, really angry. Yes, we need to put in more rail and reactivate our ports and waterways. We have to start encouraging small farming and Victory Gardens. And we’d give a ton of money to boost public transportation. Trillions of dollars. We’d tax the hell out of oil, making no friends and a lot of enemies.
Readers of my site have looked into this issue, and they are anxious. “Average folks” who say “I’ll just have to think about that energy stuff tomorrow” are the norm, and we’re not, and we know it. We’re the “weirdos” who fret and worry and try and do something different. And the more the “average folks” think someone–a politician, a CEO, an inventor–is just going to make all of this go away, the more anxious my readers become.
My goal here, however, is not to convince you. I’m here to suggest that a deeper investigation into our energy problems will generate emotional reactions inside you. These reactions will either spur you toward greater action, or will activate your defense mechanisms and you may react by going into denial, displace your worries onto something else, or project what you’re feeling, to name a few. But your reactions, however blase or intense, will not change the course we are on. Only your actions will, and the most effective action you take will have social consequences.
Taking effective action will make you a “weirdo” or will be political suicide. Doing nothing leaves you, or your kids or grandkids dead in the water. Literally. The choice is yours.
And, in case you need cheering up, here’s a movie preview on this issue that will really make you laugh, or at least the entire movie will (and that’s no joke…). It is written by an award-winning television writer who is disguised as an ordinary guy. To watch the preview, just click on the big GO button on the top right of the screen.
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Here’s some more facts if you want them…
So, here’s the rub: regardless of whether you buy a Prius, and cover your roof with solar panels, you aren’t going to be safe from what we’re facing. You’re surrounded by people who won’t be able to afford those things, and even if they could, they’d burn out the electrical grid if they did. We can build a ton of nuclear power plants, but that’s going to take decades, and we better be prepared to build a lot of them. Don’t like nukes? Well, we can burn a lot of coal, then, to try to keep up our lifestyle. Don’t believe there is such a thing as clean coal?
Solar and wind has to be the solution! Pres. Obama plans to strategically invest in $150 billion over the next 10 years to catalyze private efforts to build a clean energy future, that’s good, isn’t it. Of course it is, but it is not going to fly our jets, and is really not scalable. Obama wants to ensure that 10% of our electricity comes from renewable sources by 2012, and 25% by 2025, but that would be quite a feat. One-sixth of 1 per cent – 0.0016 – of annual U.S. energy consumption is from solar and wind, and doubling it will increase this amount to one-third of 1 per cent. (You also can’t run your electric stove/clothes dryer/air conditioner on these…)
And what about biofuels? Nathaniel Greene, director of renewable-energy policy for the Natural Resources Defense Council, said “energy specialists joke that the “next generation” of biofuels is five years away from commercial use – and has been that way since the 1980s.”
Turning to greater electrical generation requires building more nuclear and coal fired plants, both of which have enormous environmental costs. These, no doubt, will be built despite environmental concerns. Our passion for biofuels will fade, as fossil fuels stop providing us with the fertilizers and pesticides that brought us the “green revolution” in agriculture. We’ll need all the land we can get for growing food.
Porter Novelli Ad Man (PNAM): Please come in, Mr. Row, take a seat…
Tim: Exactly why am I here?
PNAM: We’ll get to that in just a minute…but first, can I get you a cup of coffee?
Tim: I don’t drink coffee. Do you have herbal tea?
PNAM: Why, yes we do, Helen will you get Mr….
Tim: Here Helen, here’s my cup.
(Look passes between PNAM & Helen)
PNAM: Tim, this is Dr. Vargas. He’s a psychiatrist that would like to ask you a few questions.
Tim: A psychiatrist? You guys dragged me all the way down here to be interviewed by a psychiatrist? Do you know how long it took me to get here?
Dr.: That’s an excellent place to begin, Tim. Exactly how did you get to our office today?
Tim: What? I biked to the train…But it was 8 transfers and it cost me $37.50
Dr.: We’ll reimburse you for that money, Tim. But could you tell us, what did you eat today?
Tim: Usual, it’s spring, so the ramps are up, and I still have left-over rye from the winter, so I heated that up.
Dr.: Did the rye come from a cereal box by one of our sponsors? (lists cereal manufacturers…)
Tim: No, I grew it.
Dr.: And the bike you rode, where did you purchase that?
Tim: I put it together from dump parts.
Dr.: That shirt you are wearing, it is designer, is it not?
Tim: (looking at his shirt) Um, I guess so…
Dr: Which store did you purchase that in?
Tim: The second hand one in town.
Dr.: Tim, think back and tell me honestly, when was the last time you went to a major department store or mall?
Tim: I hate those places…
Dr.: Just answer the question, son.
Tim: Let me think…Oh, last November. I needed to get my daughter a birthday gift.
Dr.: Ahh! Excellent! And what did you buy there?
Tim: Buy? I didn’t buy anything. They toss out pallets, and I picked up some to assemble…
Dr.: You didn’t actually go into the store?
Tim: I told you, I hate those places.
Dr.: (To PNAM) It’s premature. I haven’t given him the ‘Consumer Imagery Test,’ yet, but I think I can safely provide you with a diagnosis…’Carborexia.’
PNAM: But that will do, Dr. Vargas. Thank you, Mr. Row, please see my secretary, Helen, for your reimbursement check and stipend…
carborexic n. A person who is obsessed with minimizing his or her use of carbon. —adj.
—carborexia n.
Carborexia. It was first developed in the “fashion” section of the New York Times, in an inane article by Joanne Kaufman called Completely Unplugged, Fully Green. She was supposed to be interviewing Sharon Astyk for her latest book publication, but instead, it turned into a slam on what Edson Freeman and I call Sharon’s “Brown” lifestyle. But simply attacking Asytk wasn’t enough. She, and her ilk, called “Deep Greens” by the Ad Men at Porter Novelli, made up seven percent of “consumers,” and this group had to be handled. They needed a diagnostic label, to shape readers’s opinions in the mainstream press: This pathetic behavior-refusing to buy things-was sick and had to be stopped.
Read the original NYT’s article, and you’ll learn that the only psychiatrist commenting on ‘carborexia’ was mealy mouthed, giving only general responses of what it would mean if people showed ‘this or that’ behavioral symptom. I won’t beat the point to death, as I did in that earlier article “Spreading Manure over Astroturf: Why Ad Men Hate Brown,” except to say its important to identify and reject such pathologizing whenever you see it. Follow the Money.
That NYT article appeared on October 19th, but within a few days, it was widely quoted, and a pathology was born:
Being environmentally aware is one thing, and being obsessed with it, is another, say US psychiatrists, who warn that extreme environmental awareness may be creating a generation of “carborexics.”
In a new survey, it was found that seven per cent of Americans come into the category of “dark green” — hard core recyclers and carbon footprint worriers.
However, scientists claim that there is a thin line between these behavioural traits qualifying for eco-leadership or bordering on the obsessive-compulsive.
—”Dark-green ‘carborexics’ — the latest generation of extreme green addicts,” Asia News International, October 21, 2008
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“Do you feel anxious when you see a television set left on standby? Does the sight of a plastic bottle haphazardly tossed into a paper-only recycling bin make you feel nauseous? Are you consumed with rage when someone has left an empty room and not switched off the light? Have you recently found yourself overcome with a desire to spit on your car-driving friends and family? When a loved one tells you that he is flying off for some winter sun, do you feel like bludgeoning him over the head with a blunt instrument until he appears no longer to be breathing?
If so, don’t worry! You are probably suffering from “carborexia’, Or “energy anorexia’”.
—Bryony Gordon, “Obsessed with saving the planet? There are worse fates,” The Daily Telegraph, October 23, 2008
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This concern PNAM have about people not shopping isn’t about their ‘obsession’ with “saving the planet,” folks. The pathologizing is an attempt to save the corporations. If it becomes “fashionable” not to ‘buy,’ that seven percent could grow.
But of course, it is already growing–this group of “not buying” consumers. But now its because of a new pathology: “Poverty” “Credit Cardeous Maxed Outeus.”
“I think we’ve been through a period where too many people have been given to understand that if they have a problem, it’s the government’s job to cope with it. ‘I have a problem, I’ll get a grant.’ ‘I’m homeless, the government must house me.’ They’re casting their problem on society. And, you know, there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first. It’s our duty to look after ourselves and then, also to look after our neighbour. People have got the entitlements too much in mind, without the obligations. There’s no such thing as entitlement, unless someone has first met an obligation.”
———-Prime minister Margaret Thatcher, talking to Women’s Own magazine, October 31 1987
…she should know. She did a heck of a job destroying her society. Was it an accident or was it a planned outcome of promoting Free Market capitalism? Was the dramatic rise in addictive behaviors during her term in office related to this “war on culture?” Read on.
Introduction
This paper will argue that the very “Free Market” values that Thatcher embraced, created the demand for the increased social program that she disparages in this quote. To Thatcher, and all Free Market leaders, there is no “society” because they have spend decades destroying it, intentionally, to “free the power of the markets.”
The Problem of Community
Whether we are wealthy or poor, there is little stability in our lives. Jobs evaporate without notice; our interlocking relationships with our communities are weak and unstable; and often connected by thin threads of “PTA” or “team sports.” Our marriages end and our lovers change. We live long distances from our families. We switch occupations, looking for job security, and we’re forced to switch again. Technical skills need constant updating, and co-workers come and go. We may switch religions, therapists, spiritual practices, or even ideologies as we progress through our lives. Where there was one income, now we need two, and if either one is terminated, our lives can’t continue as they were before, so we are twice as vulnerable as we were in the past. Our cultural infrastructure is fragile as well as our ecosystem. We see this tenuous connection as accidental or inadvertent, but what if there is some underlying demand that requires is fragility between people, their spiritual values, their notions of the physical world and even their self-concept?
Addicted to Oil
I started out this piece believing that the phrase “addicted to oil” was an inaccurate one, because, as is true, oil is such an essential aspect of our current culture that we could no more say that we were “addicted” to oil, than to say we were “addicted” to the blood that pulses through our veins.
But the brilliant work of Bruce Alexander has modified my argument. I encourage my readers to review his work first, and then return to this post. I’ve come to see that we cling to our “lifestyle,” not for neurobiological or purely psychological reasons, but because we live in a political and economic system that has demanded it. Free market systems, or any ideological system based on production and growth, strips us of the very foundations that makes us human, and addictions, in the broadest sense of the word, allows us some relief from this “gilded cage.”
The veil is thick and the acculturation so thorough that it is difficult to believe that it wasn’t “always thus.” But history points out the patterns if we pay attention to them. Let’s start with our relationship with nature:
Freed From Nature
As a child after school, I spent my time playing in a narrow strip of woods that separated my family’s land from our neighbors. There were areas where my buddy and I would find an opening in bushes, and play inside endlessly, tucked away from the world around us. The ground had bugs, the leaves had webs. We felt at home.
When my daughter grew up, I was in graduate school, and read child psychologists who recommended that a child have hours each day to play alone, without parental interference. We lived in a working-class neighborhood, and there were local kids she could just go outside and play with. She went to a private school during the day, and most other parents had their childrens’ lives scheduled daily with sports teams, lessons of various sorts, and “play dates.” Few were available to “come over and play” if she spontaneously called them. None could do so without a ride. Events needed to be scheduled in advance, even for 7 year olds. In contrast to her school friends, her neighborhood kids created their own games on the street. She learned to fight, make up, establish friendships, and navigate group relationships, all away from the constant supervision of adults. My daughter as a toddler, used to “kiss worms.”
It’s safe to say that today, most parents don’t feel like their Popsicle Index (the score you’d give to how “safe” you’d feel allowing your child to go to the corner store and buy a Popsicle) is high enough for them to feel safe allowing their children to play unattended. Today’s 7 year olds often don’t prefer to play outside anymore, unless it is in organized sports with adult supervision. They prefer to play video games inside. Nature is something they “move through” or “use” when they need to. They may take “nature courses,” but they are unlikely to develop the desire to kiss a worm.
As adults, many of us spend our days having little direct unstructured time out of doors. We move in a whirl from a commuter’s car ride to an indoor parking garage, and an air conditioned office. We often arrive early and leave late. We press a button and our remote-controlled garage door opens, and we go back inside our homes once again.
Evolutionarily, this is a bizarre way to live.
WORK
For many of us, our labor is stripped of its most basic meaning. We stare into a computer screen, answer telephone calls, sell products, and little of it has anything to do with materially benefiting the people we care about, except through our incomes.
Many of my students who come back to classes to become Marriage and Family Therapists do so, usually taking a cut in pay in their current jobs, because they “want to make a difference” to people. They want a deeper connection to those they interact with. They see their current jobs as providing a way of making a living, but they want more. They want an image of what they see as a “better life.”
There was a time, before the rise of “free markets,” when the work you did was directly tied in to who you were and how you served others. Even our names, Baker, Taylor, Wheeler, Smith, Farmer, and Priest told the world our place in it. The shoes you made went on real feet. The food fed people you knew.
Farm boy Rebellions
Most of us today, can easily point out the advantages that industrialization has brought us, but few can describe the constant rebellion industrialists faced, as “farm boys” left the fields and headed to the factories. They refused to obey the clock that told them when to show up for work. They would work until they were paid, and disappear, often on extended drunks, until their money ran out. They worked, as they had on their farms, at their own pace, and in their own time. Family priorities continued to be dominant, and they would leave to return home whenever they were needed.
They had to be shaped. They had to be conditioned to a life where they were never able to see the light of day. They had to learn to accept the control that told them when they could eat or toilet. The rhythms of their lives were dramatically disrupted. They didn’t rest in the winter. They lived in cramped quarters with very little green space around them.
They did a set of repetitive movements, instead of getting fresh air and exercise. Their lives were de-contextualized. Their labor meant nothing more than a way of getting currency. Oftentimes, they developed a set of symptoms that we’d classify as depression, anxiety, alcoholism, or antisocial behavior. In a word, they went “crazy.”
Immigrant Communities
Immigrant workers fared worse economically, but often better socially. Their ghettos provided context for them, a common language, a web of cultural traditions and mutual obligations. Often, they would leave their homelands and land in a new city where they recognized people from “back home.” Those without a network of “people like me,” were most symptomatic, displaying more paranoia, disability, and adjustment difficulties. Those who could successfully create the “Little Italy’s” or similar insular communities, seemed least impacted by the dislocation.
Moving Up
Their adult children were often encouraged to move away from these ethnic ghettos, and a funny thing happened when they did: They got more prosperous and they got more symptomatic. The wealthier they became and the farther removed they were from these “working class” roots, the more social problems they experienced. To their families, they were “successes” in their educational and occupational attainment. Internally, though they often were cut off from the very lifeblood of the community that no one told them they needed.
Those children who refused to leave the “neighborhood” were considered “failures” educationally or economically, but often “successes” socially. These were the adults who kept their cultural traditions alive and took care of aging parents. Sometimes, however, even if they wanted to stay in their neighborhoods, gentrification in the inner cities made this impossible. They were forced to live in more suburban settings, and often their cut-off created similar problems to their more prosperous peers.
Stamping Out Culture
For the free market to really be free, workers need to rely on their employer as their primary allegiance. Currency has to replace barter and community self-sufficiency. Elements valuable to an individual’s emotional and social well-being in traditional societies such as clan loyalties, village responsibilities, guild rights, charity, family obligations, social roles, or religion–all “distorted” the free play of markets, and interrupted the laws of supply and demand. While ‘Farmboys’ were unruly and “too independent,” after several generations, their urban children were shaped into what Alexander calls “dislocated people,” stripped of their traditional cultural identities and affiliations, and too far removed from the rhyme and rhythm of farm life to believe that any other system of life could actually “work.”
Colonializing the Mind
Futurist Valerio Evangelisti, talks about how our most intimate visions of the world are shaped by the free market. A constant barrage of messages were needed to shape peoples’ imaginations, dreams and our most intimate visions of the world and our place in it. It took “carefully engineered management, advertising, taxation, and mass media techniques [to] keep people buying, selling, working, borrowing, lending, and consuming at optimal rates,” according to Alexander. These efforts were “deliberately undermining… countervailing influences.” Even those who wanted to change their lives and get out of the “rat race” often found it unworkable to leave their cages without severe penalty.
People naturally want to strengthen ties, to eat together, to make work more relevant, but their efforts are undermined by the free market system. Rather than promoting connections, strengthening ties, and reestablishing new forms of psychosocial integration, these are suppressed. My clients can’t find a time when the family can eat together because of work and childrens’ obligations. The modern worker has to fight a powerful tide when we attempt to create meaningful local connections. We are the “David” to the Goliath of multinational corporations when we try to develop our own small businesses. The system works against us, to benefit the flow of goods and markets that we are fit into, and have to fight hard to reshape.
But when the free market can effectively ‘colonialize the mind,’ rebellion is minimized, and cooperation strengthened. “Normal” behavior is numbing, places a high value on consumption, increases income discrepancy, and maintains dependency. It clears the way for free trade, while boosting the rate of addictive behavior in its workers. We are given a set of “alternative behaviors” to buffer the loss of real meaningful connection to people, work, and nature. We are given ‘systems’ that allow us to “place” our children for care, “distribute” our food, (increasingly pre-cooked,) and disconnect emotionally or physically because if we are watching the media or driving in our cars, we’re left with the feeling of going somewhere, anywhere but where we’re stuck.
We numb ourselves, drug our kids, and wonder why greater material wealth isn’t buying us health.
Patch of Ground
Traditional people are tied to the land, and embedded in their clan, so they do not relocate easily or willingly. People must be driven off the land violently. When we are effective at disconnecting people from their cultural and historic roots, from any meaningful affection for nature and appreciation for their part OF it, then “nature” becomes nothing more than a set of entertainment or “lifestyle” options.
Realtors complain that people often ask to be both lakeside, and on a mountainside, with no appreciation for why this is impossible. When children grow up inside, with electronics instead of outdoor environments, they don’t care what happens to the earth around them. Even pets become “utilitarian” rather than precious creatures, and are forgotten and can be left to starve without parental intervention. Our contact with nature is recreational, and we become “outdoorsmen” instead of men and women embedded in nature. Our lakes are stocked for fishing, and our “wildlife” becomes our zoo animals. Nature is what happens outside the big picture window of our climate-controlled lives.
If our neighborhoods become polluted, we move. We ship the garbage “away,” without a clue that there is no “away” to throw. Our transformation is complete when the child asks the farmer who pulls a carrot from the ground: “How did you get that in there?” Even my rural neighbors are shocked to find that eggs and milk come out warm. Like our spouses, religions, families and friends, nature is discarded when it no longer fits our “lifestyle needs.”
REBELLION
In Alexander’s view, alienation from traditional “family values” is an essential feature, not an unexpected outcome of an affluent society. We are removed from the restrictions and meagerness of a traditional culture and in exchange we are given a great deal of material success. All but the very poorest among us expect to live with electricity, heat, running water, hot water, and telephone. We work for the promise of consumer goods, but in our affluence, we are left with an emptiness of the soul, or “poverty of the spirit.”
Therapists replace priests in our “search for meaning” and in a corporate healthcare system, instead of room to question the very fabric of our existence, we are given “interventions” to “resolve” our “symptoms.” “Recreation” gives us a short break from the daily grind. Consumption and energy use to keep us “comfortable” are accepted as “necessary diversions” to keep our minds entertained and our hungry souls temporarily satiated. Like an addict, if it leads to our ultimate destruction or the death of our children, we can’t seem to focus on this today. We’ll think about it tomorrow.
ADDICTION
“Addiction” in Dr. Alexander’s view, is caused not by a predisposition to a particular drug, or a “’disease’ of aberrant individuals,” but instead by a “poverty of the spirit,” which he calls “dislocation.” “The key to controlling addiction” he argues, “is maintaining a society in which psychosocial integration is attainable by the great majority of people. People need to belong within their society, not just trade in its markets.”
Alexander traces the history of systematic social dislocation under the system of free market economies, but he argues, while capitalism has been most effective at stripping people of their sense of belonging, place, and clan, any political system that destroys psychosocial integration on a grand scale in the interest of economic development and ideological purity, (such as the USSR), can also dramatically increase addictive behavior.
According to Alexander, “In a word, addictions is overwhelming involvement…that is, being so wrapped up in something or somethings, that all the rest of the things that make a normal, satisfying, socially productive life diminish in importance.” “We aren’t addicted to oil,” he argues “we are addicted to an affluent lifestyle.” Addiction is a harmful lifestyle, which may or may not involve drugs, which more and more people in free market society are adopting as a desperate measure to prevent themselves from being crushed by severe, prolonged dislocation.”
Climbing Down
It is easy to understand the logic that says that this cultural indoctrination is so complete, and reinforcing and restraining in so many ways, that change will not happen voluntarily.
Addicts who need their drugs for a whole host of reasons, seldom give them up voluntarily. Instead, perhaps through “fellowship” they find a new connection and community that replaces this former “retractable problem.” Worse still, though, our lifestyle addictions aren’t framed in terms that make them appear to be anything but normal and acceptable life choices. It is hard to imagine why anyone would voluntarily return to the “hardships” and “provincialism” of earlier times. Like a junkie or alcoholic, our thinking is in absolutes. It is intolerable to imagine a world without our “fix.” It is inconceivable that a system has been structured to create the demand, the need for the addiction itself. However, in order to change, like the addict, we must accept this possibility, and reframe our problem.
Once our outlook accepts this as a possibility, we can see historical evidence that dramatic cultural change happens, and while the evidence of this change is slow and evolving, the emotional shift that requires it is instantaneous.
Evidence of Change
There are a number of times in history when large numbers of people rejected their culture’s dominant paradigm, and chose instead to insist on a new world order that dramatically shook up the world they were living in, and caused them great personal hardship. It was just such a Christian rebellion against slavery which may have been instrumental in the fall of the Roman Empire. The Civil Rights movement in this country was successful when large numbers of people refused to accept the “status quo.” We may well be on a edge of another dramatic paradigmatic shift.
The Broadening of Brown
According to Porter Novelli, a PR firm studying these issues for businesses, seven percent of the population identify with issues Novelli calls “dark green.” Edson Freeman and I call it Brown. Browns reject consumption, and is just one of many shifting perspectives that may not be “televised” but are nonetheless growing movements. Peak Oil, permaculture, environmental action, and relocalization are just some of what is directly talked about here. The evidence of this sort of “mass movement” is diverse but growing:
A magazine devoted to backyard poultry is printing 10 times what they had anticipated the demand to be. People are building coops in their urban yards, illegally. Our economic climate is tossing many otherwise “normal” people out of middle-class jobs, and as many as half of us might find ourselves in the “alternative economy” within a few years time. Oil pressures will create a more even playing field for local growing and manufacturing. Violent shifts in climate conditions drives popular sentiment away from “nature as tool” to a more integrated view of humans as a small part of the greater whole.
It will not be a smooth transition.
We will face a lot of hardships and difficulties along the way, but the good news is that as we re-activate community and kinship networks, we’ll see a reduction in addictions as well. First, however, we are likely to see a tremendous increase in problematic compulsive behavior, as people seek out “substitute” addictions to calm their nerves. One might even want to examine the viability of their communities based on the level of addiction among the population, as an indication of that area’s level of dislocation. This is likely to worsen before it improves.
If Alexander is right, that all elements which preserve an integrated, vibrant natural and social employment have to be destroyed, to allow the free market to rein, let’s hope the opposite is true. As we see a deteriorating international marketplace, we may see a return to community viability and cohesion. We will likely see a rise of religious and spiritual involvement. But if we are to take acts to shape this transformation, we have to understand what we are dealing with.
If we see this dislocation as accidental, we may be misled. If we accept that it was a necessary step to first destroy our kinship, clan, land and religious bonds, in order to have our consumer culture thrive (at the cost of our spiritual or emotional well-being) we may then cautiously welcome these back into our lives, instead of viewing them as an reactionary intrusion from the past. In either case, this transformation will not be uniform, and clearly some of our more stable communities, perhaps poorer, but already high in traditional kinship and community associations, will fare better than those which have been more effectively decimated socially, while they may have been thriving economically.
The human faculties of perception, judgment, discriminative feeling, mental activity, and even moral preference, are exercised only in making a choice. He who does anything because it is the custom, makes no choice. He gains no practice either in discerning or in desiring what is best. The mental and moral, like the muscular powers, are improved only by being used. The faculties are called into no exercise by doing a thing merely because others do it, no more than by believing a thing only because others believe it.
——————ON LIBERTY by John Stuart Mill (1859)
Forward:
It is time for the Peak Oil community to stop trying to find an adequate DSM IV-TR diagnosis to label ourselves with, and to reject those outside of our community who try to do so as well. No good will come from pathologizing ourselves by creating new and cleverer labels based on diagnostic or pseudo-diagnostic criteria.
Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!
Introduction
In this article I will present the first of three parts in my argument against this rather perverse pursuit of dreaming up pathological diagnoses. I will attempt to convince you, dear reader, why I think it is not only a big fat waste of time, but actually harmful to what we are attempting to do, which is, to crudely sum it up:
To wake people the f*** up. (TWPTFU)
In this first post, I will begin by discussing our love/hate relationship with the entire idea of being diagnosed, then I’ll dive into a history of the Diagnostics & Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, DSM, and it’s various transformations over time. Here I’ll weave in the organizations that have been most instrumental in its development, namely, the war machine, government number crunchers, medical insurance companies, and Big Pharm. Afterward, I’ll try to explain how a psychiatric disorder is a flimsy cousin to medical disorders.
In the second post, I will examine all the various pathological descriptions folks like you and me have placed on ourselves as we try to TWPTFU. These attacks come from three sources and I will describe each of them.
In the final post, I will examine the diagnostic darling of the PO community: namely, various cute adaptation of PTSD, and ask myself, and you “Why in creation do you think it’s a good idea to want anything to do with this label?” I’ll end my trilogy applauding, rather than pathologizing the Cassandra in us, and suggest that we should honor her for what she really is, and what she truly brings to us: wisdom, courage, fortitude, persistence, vision, resilience, and a tiny shot of making it out of this entire massive mess with more than a pencil and a bad attitude. (You who are new to Peak Oil might want to wait and read that post first…)
Love/Hate Relationship with Diagnoses
This culture appears to have a “love/hate” relationship with diagnostic labels. On the one hand, we want to declare that no word or phrase will ever capture our complexity. They only serve to compartmentalize who we are, or what we are experiencing.
On the other hand, when we are hurting, as we are when we wake up to the big three E’s, (energy, environment, economy), we want some validation. We hope for some word that is so powerful and descriptive, that it can adequately define the pain we feel. We know instinctively that psychological labels are dehumanizing, so we rebel against such labels. On the other hand, we hope that these same labels might explain and contextualize to others why we think and act the way that we do.
A (Not So)Quick History of the DSM
Having just completed my second year of teaching a graduate course entitled: “Discourses in Psychopathology,” allow me to provide you with a brief introduction to the history of the DSM:
It was Kraepelin in the late 18th century who proposed the idea that mental disorders were “discrete illnesses, each with its own symptom, course and prognosis.” Such a descriptive approach lost favor within the psychiatric community early in this century, and efforts were directed, instead, to analyzing or explaining the underpinnings of conditions ailing the human psyche. “Heuristic potential” was a term tossed around to explain how Freudian notions opened up interesting discussions and debates about the nature of man and the human condition. It was messy. It was complex. It couldn’t be ‘proven’ and it was filled with contradictions or paradoxes. It was also full of professional jargon and difficult to read. This was the foundation of the first DSM manual. The authors tried to explain why people were the way they were. They were advocates of a particular theoretical perspective – the psychoanalytic one. Why have only a single manual, then? Why not just read the text from one’s own theoretical group? To answer that question, we have to look into who was interested in developing the DSM and for what purpose.
Selection, Statistics and War
The 1840 census was the first attempt to gather statistics on mental disorders. It listed only one: “idiocy/insanity.” In 1917, a “Committee on Statistics” from what is now known as the American Psychiatric Association (APA), together with the National Commission on Mental Hygiene, developed a new guide for mental hospitals called the “Statistical Manual for the Use of Institutions for the Insane”, and this expanded to include 22 diagnoses. That same year, the USA entered into World War I.
Wars have always been good for the psychiatric profession, and the fun of categorizing and labeling people truly began in earnest with the start of World War II. Generously supported by grants from the US government and the Military Industrial Complex, psychiatrists busied themselves with the selecting, processing, assessment and treatment of soldiers, while psychologists developed psychological and intelligence tests to rank them for placement. Thanks to the war effort (and perhaps because of it), by 1950, the DSM grew to 130 pages and listed 106 mental disorders. By 1968, during the height of the US involvement in Viet Nam, it expanded by only 4 pages but disorders grew to 182.
In the late 1980’s, I trained at an agency that belligerently clung on to the DSM-II, despite the fact that it had been replaced by the DSM-III in1980. This new DSM-III was 494 pages long and listed 265 diagnostic categories, but it wasn’t the length that disturbed my supervisors, it was the content. DSM-III had dropped its psychodynamic psychiatric focus, in favor of an attempt to standardize diagnostic practices and to facilitate the pharmaceutical regulatory process.
We might think of the opposite of “heuristic,” as the effort to “reify” or narrow down a concept. We can think of reification as the impression a butterfly makes when it gets covered in resin. We have 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. In a nutshell, I’ve just described the difference between how DSM-II and those that came before it thought about the human condition (“heuristic potential”) in contrast to how the DSM-III and the manuals that came after it, now prefer to contextualize it (“reified.”)
The new DSM diagnoses were established through “research” or a “consensus during DSM committee meetings”, rather than via a theoretical underpinning of the human emotions/mind and its predicaments. Gone were the categories based on etiology or underlying psychodynamic theory. While even this new approach assumed that each diagnostic category reflected a particular underlying etiological footprint, it side-stepped the heated theoretical debates about the nature of humans in their world by just sticking to a categorical approach. It basically said,” if a person has these 8 symptoms, we’ll call it depression. What is depression? It is a person reporting these 8 symptoms.”
Cookbook Mental Disorders
It was redesigned to meet Federal legislative mandates, and it was now written in plain English, without clinical jargon. This new DSM was oriented toward a regulatory or legislatively useful model, yielding a picture more amenable to a statistical population census, rather than just a simple diagnosis. This, however, created a problem. While it was designed so that any lay person could read and understand its wording, that very accessibility hid the necessity for the years of therapeutic training required to truly understand what the heck it was actually talking about.
It now looked like a cookbook: Find your symptoms, and give yourself a diagnosis. This, of course, is the problem with psychology in general that, say, nanotechnology doesn’t suffer from. Everyone can pretend to be an armchair psychologist, and indeed, everyone is, to one degree or another. But taking diagnostic labels, primarily used as a “convenient shorthand among professionals” and applying it (or worse adapting it) to ones current life situation is a terrible mistake. I’ll say it again, to the Peak Oil community:
Don’t do it!
But let’s return to the DSM story:
In 1994, DSM-IV was published, listing 297 disorders in 886 pages. Now, more than half of the diagnosis required that symptoms cause “clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning.” A “Text Revision” of the DSM-IV, known as the DSM-IV-TR, was published in 2000, but the diagnostic categories and the vast majority of the specific criteria for diagnosis were left unchanged. A new one is expected out this year.
Anyone want to take a guess what the DSM edition published in 2012 will look like? I imagine that it will be tiny, because in stead of describing mental disorders, it will choose, instead, to describe the one remaining woman named Janice who is the only person who lacks a diagnosis in the USA!
Operational and Conceptual Definitions
It is a demand that categories within the DSM be first, operationally defined, and then later, conceptually defined. This is both strength and a weakness. It is, of course, in the best interest of paying customers, to have a disorder which is conceptually specific and measurable. In this way, medical insurance companies in the USA, would now be able to argue that a patient’s “disorder” was symptom free and further treatment was no longer required.
Big Pharm was also deeply interested in developing operationally and conceptually defined diagnostic criteria. Discrete categories with discrete symptoms became a blueprint for drug marketing, because now they could argue that their current drug concoction was appropriate in treating a particular disorder.
DSM Evolution in a Nut Shell
So, to recap, while the DSM was originally a rather small manual that helped shape and frame the thinking of a rather elite group of professionals who all shared a similar view of the world, it has since evolved, (with the help of the US military, the Federal statisticians, and Big Pharm,) into a rather large tome, written in plain English, that is mandated by US federal regulators and adopted by US medical insurance companies for specific governmental and corporate purposes.
Mary Is Depressed
The reason why the untrained public shouldn’t go using the DSM to diagnose themselves or create new and innovative diagnostic labels to describe their reactions to Peak Oil isn’t because it should be shrouded in secrecy so professionals can collect the big bucks. It is because this text is remarkably limited in its ability to explain anything approaching a “medical” diagnosis.
Medical vs Psychiatric Diagnosis
How does a psychiatric diagnosis differ from a medical diagnosis? When we are diagnosed with “diabetes” for example, you don’t have diabetes because you go to the bathroom too often or have an unquenchable thirst. A medical diagnosis of diabetes is not a mere collection of symptoms. Together with blood and urine tests, a medical diagnosis provides new information to the physician’s clinical understanding which directs treatment. In medicine, diagnosis involves bringing together a given set of symptoms that will lead to a diagnosis, but ultimately will add new information about causation, treatment, prognosis, complications, etc. In other words, “diabetes” as a label, means more than just a set of symptoms that has led to that label. That’s what makes diagnosis helpful in medicine. “Diabetes” isn’t merely a short-hand for someone who has this set of symptoms.
Explanatorily Empty
But with psychiatric diagnosis, that is exactly what it means. Greg Mulhauser put it well when he said DSM diagnoses are explanatorily empty. The categories are prototypes, or “fuzzy sets,” and a patient with a close approximation to the prototype is said to have that disorder. They are a short-hand that lumps together a set of symptoms into a handy label that a group of professionals can understand and communicate about. Unlike the label “diabetes,” that is more than a set of symptoms, psychiatric labels don’t further our understanding any more than a “red” sweater teaches us anything about the composition of the sweater. It’s purely descriptive. So we might ask: Why do we call Mary depressed? We call her “depressed” because she has all the diagnostic signs of depression.”
Why is Mary Depressed?
What’s more, that label “depression” tells us nothing about why Mary might be depressed, or how to treat her, short of prescribing her the drugs that Big Pharm tells us works with the symptoms listed under “depression.” So, while Mary is diagnosed with “depression,” she also lives in a difficult marriage, while functioning “without symptoms” in the rest of her life, while Margaret, also is “depressed,” and was recently fired from her job after her alcohol abuse compromised her functioning. Despite having the same diagnosis, these women would likely receive different therapeutic treatment. Nevertheless, if they reported the right number of symptoms that would qualify for the diagnosis of “depression,” they would both be labeled “depressed.”
Try as they might, there is no causative or explanatory material left in the DSM-IV, because if they did that, it would have to be based on an understanding of science and not theory. In contrast to “diabetes” for example, which as a pathophysiological understanding, this type of understanding doesn’t exist for psychiatric disorders. DSM-IV editor Michael First in 2005, said “little progress has been made toward understanding the pathophysiological processes and etiology of mental disorders. If anything, the research has shown the situation is even more complex than initially imagined, and we believe not enough is known to structure the classification of psychiatric disorders according to etiology.”
In English?
Unlike a urine or blood tests for diabetes, which scientifically links positive results to the diagnosis of diabetes, there are no reliable scientific tests which “proves” the presence of a mental disorder.
Labels have power to shape our vision of how we see others.
For example, in one famous research study, graduate students with no family history of mental illness reported vague complaints and were admitted to a psychiatric hospital. Once on the ward, their directions were to act ‘normally.’ Only the fellow “inmates” were able to identify them as “frauds.” They were diagnosed, upon discharge, as “schizophrenics in remission” or similar labels.
