WHAT TO DO? WHAT TO DO? Taking Action In The Face Of Collapse

[LiberalUprising]

Every time I write an article on collapse such as my most recent one "Happy Independence Day; You Have No Government", I am bombarded with emails asking me "what should I do?" For those who have just discovered this site, that is a legitimate question because for them, the reality of collapse may be new. Those who have been following this site for some time have heard many suggestions on what to do, but this article will offer those and other suggestions again more clearly and more adamantly than they have been offered here before. The intensity you are likely to hear in this piece is driven by the urgency which I and many of my peers are feeling at this moment. Quite frankly, it's time to quit screwing around with talking about collapse and start acting. The Rubicon has been crossed, we're not living in Kansas anymore, and we are living in the closest thing we've seen to pre-World War II Germany than anything since then. Suit up and stop theorizing and speculating. It's showtime.

http://carolynbaker.net/site/content/view/48/3

[kimmerspixelated]

1. Dang!

This is some serious stuff, here. I am not trying to make light of it, but I must say this is one time the tin-foil hat thing is not fun at all. Maybe we are really fucked. My Happy Place...I need to find MY HAPPY PLACE!

[EVDebs]

2. George Orwell quotes help

“During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act”

and

“Freedom is the right to tell people what they do not want to hear”

So just keep on telling the truth and pissing people off and you'll be O.K. ! After all you can survive a fast for what, 40 days, and can live without water around a week or so. So cheer up.

[Karenina]

3. Carolyn Baker keeps writing

and I keep kicking and recommending...

[Booster]

4. Added to my favorites to read later - there's a lot of reading on

that website.

[scarletwoman]

5. Thank you for posting this! People are entrapping themselves with *hope*, when they ought to

simply give up, then get busy. The first step to surviving our current reality is to recognize what it actually is. Once you've accurately recognized it, you then have the power to figure out how best to mitigate its effects.

Hope is disempowering. It either leaves you in stasis, waiting for that for which you hope to arrive; or it impells you toward useless expenditures of energy that would be better put to the task of facing what actually is, instead of what one most fondly wishes for.

sw

[leftchick]

7. so what is a Mother to do?

That is my agony. If it were just my husband and I, we could deal. But my children! I cry daily over this, and to be frank I can not get past the first page of that site it is so frightening. :cry:

[scarletwoman]

9. You design a life that assures your survival. You teach your children well.

I guess it's old hat to me. I slipped away into the counter-culture in the 60s and stayed there. I've kept my connections to the mainstream of American life to a minimum for 4 decades now.

In the meantime I raised two children and taught them all I knew about self-sufficiency and truth. They're both adults now, both doing fine; also living their lives outside the mainstream as much as possible, also aware of the brutal truth of how much we are fucked.

I don't know what advice to give you. Teach your children ethical values, teach them the truth. Teach them to value their inner selves over external stimuli, their spirits over materialism. Live your life as the example you want them to follow.

As a parent, your most fundamental task is to ensure that your progeny live to independent adulthood. So your first order of business is to ensure your OWN survival. And you can only ensure your OWN survival by facing what is. Once you have a clear perception of "what is", you have the power to design the best strategy for survival.

From there, it's simply a matter of bringing your children along with you, physically, intellectually and spiritually (in the sense of each person honoring their own innate "spirit").

Does that help?

sw

[leftchick]

10. yes it does help sw

I am stuck in a little bit of a "what might have been " mode because of my husband. He is not seeing what I am seeing happening so I have that. Let's just say we are at different approaches to the future right now which makes decisions much harder. He needs to wake the fuck up and I don't know how to do it. :(

[scarletwoman]

11. Well, even if your husband doesn't see it like you do, it doesn't mean that you can't go ahead and

learn survival skills on your own. He's not going freak out if you simply start shopping at the local farmer's market. And maybe learn how to can because the produce is so wonderful you'd like to put some by for later.

I can't imagine that any husband would object to his wife cutting back on spending in creative, non-threatening ways. Some herb plants on the windowsill, or a tomato plant in a bucket on the deck aren't a direct challenge to his world view.

Just make incremental and easily assimilated moves toward a more self-sufficient lifestyle, you don't need to present a fully formed thesis to support them.

:D
sw

[leftchick]

12. hey! I grew tomatoes for the first time this year!

and basil and rosemary! I think I have hope!

:)

:hug:

[scarletwoman]

14. Basil and rosemary and tomatoes! YUM! Think of all the culinary delights just those three plants

can provide! Just add garlic! (and mushrooms and peppers and onions and...)

The key is, what can you provide for yourself? -- as opposed to needing someone else to provide it for you. It's the battle against globalization on the micro scale. Know your local resources, find resources for yourself. Find all the ways you can quietly disconnect from the giant web and build your own small-scale web that will support you.

Spend the extra 20 cents or 2 dollars it might take to buy the widget you need from the local hardware store instead of from Home Depot. And save $20.00 or $200.00 by learning how to mend and fix stuff instead of buying new. And be sure to get your children in on fixing stuff -- most kids LOVE it!

You'll do just fine! You already know the difference between real and unreal -- you're WAY ahead of the game!

:loveya:
sw
:hug:

[leftchick]

15. we already do a lot of that

exactly what you suggested. Buying local and we even have a local grocery still around after 60 years! I shop there often rather than the mega/super groceries. Thank you sw, once again you have inspired me. I am off to buy a clothsline today.

:hug:


:loveya:

[helderheid]

13. I'm right where you are.

[Peace Patriot]

6. Throw Diebold/ES&S election theft machines into 'Boston Harbor' NOW!

This IS the problem. Fascist coup, October 2002, in the same month as the Iraq War Resolution (IWR), and closely related to it: the "Help America Vote Act," which fast-tracked highly non-transparent, insecure and insider hackable electronic voting systems, all over the country, run on 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY programming code, owned and controlled by rightwing Bushite corporations, in time for the 2004 election. The IWR guaranteed unjust war. HAVA provided the means to shove that war down the throats of the American people.

"Trade secret" vote counting has many other uses as well--among them, to shape a so-called 'Democratic' Congress (with 30-40 "Blue Dogs"--traitor Democrats) that would ESCALATE the war, and give Bush and Cheney another $100 billion to keep killing Iraqis until they sign over their oil rights, to prevent impeachment or any accountability for unjust war, torture, spying, shredding the Constitution or any crime our Corporate Rulers want to commit, and to consolidate all the enormous war profiteer and global corporate predator gains under Bush, in prep for more of the same under Hillary, plus a military Draft.

"Trade secret" vote counting is not the only thing wrong with our election system, but it is the democracy-killer. It makes change impossible. We can out-fundraise, out-organize and out-vote the fascists, but with this "thumb on the scales" for Bushites, warmongers and corporatists, that they can now place without detection, we can never gain any traction, on a national basis, for reform, and we can never elect a true representative of the people as president, nor a Congress that reflects majority American opinion. 70% of the people now opposed to the Iraq War (up from 56% just before the war); we vote, and Congress does the opposite. Do the math.

So, how do we throw these election theft machines into 'Boston Harbor'? I don't mean it literally. Wouldn't want to pollute that ikon of the Old Republic. We have to do it locally--in county and state jurisdictions, where ordinary people still have some influence. Instead of picketing your congress creep or Bush, you should be picketing your county registrar down the street, and putting max pressure on county and state officials to count the votes in a way that everyone can see and understand.

Two basic demands: 1) a ballot for every vote; 2) count all the votes and post the results BEFORE any electronics are involved.

This campaign to restore our right to vote may be long, difficult and complicated (so many venues, so many different voting systems), or it may snowball and happen quickly, as some movements do, when they reach critical mass. I mean, "trade secret" vote counting is so unamerican, so undemocratic and so wrong, and it's such a no-brainer that we have to get rid of it, that most people (if they knew) would support a return to transparent vote counting. (A Zogby poll put it at 92%--a huge constituency for visible vote counting.) I do see signs of it snowballing--most recently in California but in other states as well. I think we have a "window of opportunity" to restore transparent vote counting, but I fear that it is not that big of a window, maybe through 2012--and we'll likely have to endure some more bad shit before we get it done (war on Iran, military conscription, more economic hardship on top of more impacts from global warming).

But once the American people are able to express their will, in real elections, the reform of this government is going to make our heads spin. Because the American people are PISSED OFF. The great majority have all along been peace-minded and justice-minded and progressive (no matter what the war profiteering corporate news monopolies have been telling you--to demoralize you). And it has taken unprecedented fascist ingenuity to oppress and disenfranchise them. But once Americans get their dander up--and figure out what's been done to them--knowledge that is spreading like wildfire (especially re: the vote counting)--LOOK OUT! There has never been a more creative, hard-working, can-do population committed to progressive ideals than the American people--a product of our history of revolutionary movements (independence, anti-slavery, women's rights, labor rights, anti-robber baron, pro-socialism (FDR-the New Deal), pro-UN (world peace; no more world wars), pro-human rights, anti-segregation, pro-civil rights, anti-Vietnam war, and the environmental movement), our multiculturalism (variety is good--new ideas, new DNA always coming in), and our combined, collective intelligence (putting men on the moon, putting Hubble in the sky, giving older people artificial hips that work better than the real ones, etc., etc.).

That's why the global corporate predators who are running both political parties took away our right to vote. THEY'RE AFRAID OF US!

[lovuian]

8. ok first off this is the US one of the biggest economies in the

world the only thing that could happen is a Recession or worst case Depression

this is what the Corporations have created and it will be very very tough times ahead

but anger will rise up from the pain

Socialism is on the upswing