Re: SC41

http://www.atlanticfreepress.com/content/view/1514/81/

The Spirituality of Collapse

...........For most Americans, heads anchored firmly in the sand, shrugging off anything they are now hearing about “Peak Oil,” still driving their gas-gulping SUVs, reveling in suburban sprawl, and gullibly counting on their pensions and 401Ks to be there when they need them, the notion of civilization’s collapse is still largely relegated to the lunatic fringe. Whatever the problem, they cluelessly argue, technology will find a solution. But millions of those same individuals are far deeper in debt than they were one year ago, and during that year, they have seen the prices of gas, food, and virtually everything else dramatically increase. Some of those Americans have in the past year have had to face the reality that they are part of the rapidly-vanishing middle class who are only one paycheck or one catastrophic illness away from financial oblivion—who between mortgage, car payments, monthly bills, childcare, medical expenses, gas prices, and doubling monthly credit card bills, now realize that not only will they not be able to pay for their kids’ college education but that every new day necessitates walking more precariously over an economic tightrope across a gaping precipice with a thousand-foot drop. Those folks know in their bones the reality of collapse—they feel it, smell it, taste it, but may not yet be able to allow the words to pass from their lips. It’s still too horrifying to fully contemplate.

For both groups of Americans, collapse is very bad news. It will mean the end of lifestyles they cannot imagine living without. They have become their lifestyle, and in its absence, they believe they will have no identity—that literally, they will cease to exist. For these folks, collapse will be extremely painful, and worse. Since they have isolated themselves in their hermetically-sealed suburban “dormitories,” they are not likely to survive unless they are willing to radically alter their behavior, and by the time they are, if they are, it may be far too late to do so.

Unquestionably, collapse will be brutal and agonizing. It is, in fact, the cessation of life based on fossil fuels, weather and climate as we have known them, and the money system to which we have become accustomed. It will be physically, economically, emotionally, and spiritually excruciating. It will test human beings, particularly those individuals who are not members of the ruling elite but who enjoy privileged, comfortable lifestyles devoid of sacrifice and inconvenience, beyond anything they could imagine in their worst nightmares. Some will endure; others will perish; in fact, some experts speculate that at least one-third of humans on planet Earth will not survive. Whether collapse occurs slowly or quickly, it will be torturous...........

............collapse strips us of who we think we are so that who we really are may be revealed. Civilization’s toxicity has fostered the illusion that one is, for example, a professional person with money in the bank, a secure mortgage, a good credit rating, a healthy body and mind, raising healthy children who will grow up to become successful like oneself, and that when one retires, one will be well-taken-care of. If that has become your identity, and if you don’t look deeper, you won’t discover who you really are; and when collapse happens, you will be shattered because you have failed to notice the strengths, resources, and gifts that abide in your essence which transcend and supercede your ego-identity. In a post-collapse world, academic degrees and stock portfolios matter little. The real question, as Richard Heinberg so succinctly puts it is: Do you know how to make shoes?...........

.............collapse will decimate our anti-tribal, individualistic, Anglo-American programming by forcing us to join with others for survival. You may own a home outright with ample acreage on which you have produced a stunning organic garden, have a ten-year cache of food and water, drive a hybrid car, and live a completely solarized life, but if you think you will survive in isolation, you are tragically deluded. Collapse dictates that we will depend on each other, or we will die...............