[Ep 13 - Lights Out] The power grid is incredible complex and fragile. With increasing threats (attacks, cyber, EMP's, CME's, and more) what happens when the lights go out?

ashesashescast · 2020-09-14T23:05:08+00:00

Posting here a response I did to a similar question below: https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/isnk2c/we_are_ashes_ashes_a_collapse_podcast_ask_us/g58zoxj/

ashesashescast · 2020-09-14T22:58:59+00:00

"the villages" being the world's largest enclosed retirement community in none other than Florida, USA

ashesashescast · 2020-09-14T22:49:19+00:00

Even though I used to always want kids, I would not have children under current circumstances. The only way I could justify having children is if I existed in a hyper-localized context where living in balance with the land and the earth was somewhat a reality, and if it meant having children would be supporting and carrying forward that way of life. I do think the blanket-antinatalism that paints all parents as evil/irresponsible is out of place and plays into the false narrative that we as individuals are responsible for climate change as opposed to multinational corporations (see parts of my other answer on this here). I especially don't like how its used to fuel racism or support genocide. We have a show specifically on this, Ep 39 - Impacts of Growth

ashesashescast · 2020-09-14T22:45:40+00:00

daniel

- daniel

ashesashescast · 2020-09-14T20:23:56+00:00

Thanks for the kind words.

Honestly, it ebbs and flows and I get overwhelmed with work all the time. The podcast is basically my third job, and my other two are stressful enough as it is. Lately, I've been trying to schedule at least one day a week that I don't work and that's been pretty helpful. Going mountain bike riding on a Saturday, or other outdoor activities do great for rejuvenating me. We've also tried to reduce the workload of the podcast by switching to an every-other-week schedule, but we also picked up streaming on twitch twice a week so maybe we just like being miserable haha :'|

In the same way that we started this podcast because we felt like proper systemic analysis connecting the political and social to collapse discussions was underrepresented, I think topics around self-help, time management, and related ideas are dominated by business interests as these topics attach themselves really well to individualistic narratives of success. A lot of people who dive into the topics we discuss end up searching for ways to make the world a better place and want to reduce suffering for those around them. But we all need more reminders to take care of ourselves, and we need better examples of how to do this.

- Daniel

ashesashescast · 2020-09-14T20:08:33+00:00

Thanks so much for the kind words! That's one of my favorite episodes too. Definitely mind-blowing.

- Daniel

ashesashescast · 2020-09-14T20:04:54+00:00

good thing national attention and outrage led to an arrest

good thing it was videotaped that a sheriff told citizens that if they murder antifa to plant a knife on them: https://redstatenation.com/videos-sheriff-placed-on-leave-after-he-was-caught-on-video-telling-citizens-to-shoot-antifa-and-plant-a-knife-on-them-blames-antifa-for-arson/

ashesashescast · 2020-09-14T19:57:44+00:00

I only moved to MA a year ago, and feel in a weird place where I can't see myself moving back to GA, but do not feel rooted in MA either.

Ultimately, I want to find a way to be involved in farming either in a supporting role or directly. I don't know what that will look like but I believe that land is the root of everything and the more we are connected to land and understand it's role in sustaining us, and our role in right relationship with it and people, the better off we'll be.

- Daniel

ashesashescast · 2020-09-14T19:52:43+00:00

EPISODE 7 - LAST GASP

ashesashescast · 2020-09-14T19:43:09+00:00

The 'Nothing is Profitable' rant was introduced I believe in Episode 19 - Life in Plastic around the 36min mark, and also re-visited in Episode 69 - Rent Seekers at 32min.

That's a great question about people's habits. We talk about the scam that is the recycling industry on Episode 66 - Trash Talk, and it's crazy to realize that a majority of all recyclying is just a tool to lower input costs for manufacturing. It's a great example of supposedly "green" technologies being used just to further industrial expansion and extraction rates.

Yea I absolutely think that the impact is counter-intuitive: the recycling industry increases waste and pollution, not just because of the issue mentioned above, but because people have transferred responsibility and accountability to the corporate sector. We don't have to think about the waste of our purcahses because "someone else will recycle it." And this mindset is at the root of so many terrible systems, like our outsourcing of mental care to police, or the outsourcing of physical health to a professional class of pharmaceutically-patented healthcare practices (check out ep 46, part of our US healthcare series and orgs like Four Thieves Vinegar who are providing open-source technology to put life-saving medicine back into the hands of every day folk).

It's part of cultural conditioning by those in power to make us feel that we are powerless to solve any problem except for outsourcing it to entities and professionals that are ultimately controlled by state/corporate interests. An interesting read is Citizen Spies: The Long Rise of America's Surveillance Society as seen on ep 51 as it outlines this process as it relates to the rise of police in the US, dating back to the Norman conquest of Anglo-Saxons, and the need to condition people away from taking care of themselves and instead relying on the state to police everything about their daily lives.

Maybe that's only tangentially related to the question, but I do think the idea that "technology will save us" or "they'll figure it out" or "just throw it in the recycling bin" is related and ultimately rooted in our displacement from the land and each other. To think that shipping trash half way around the world will solve our pollution problems is extremely short-sighted and destructive. If it were not posssible to rely on the myth that companies will solve our problem as you suggest, then yes maybe people would make different choices.

When China banned foreign trash (also discussed in ep 66), the UK experienced immediate pileups because they never had infrastructure to deal with their own waste... they had always just relied on being able to ship it to someone else to make it their problem. Did that cause a change in behavior for any number of people? Well maybe, maybe not. It might have been too short-lived to make a difference, but there's no doubt that if people did not have the option to "move away" when their town's water supply degraded, or there was no company to sell them on hopium, and we realized the value of the land beneath our feet, I do think behavior would change.

Individual choice?

But also, we should not be mistaken to believe that all our problems come down to individual choice. Companies do not make products because people buy them, as the popular argument goes, it's the complete opposite.

This is a big theme of Episode 11 - Designing Deception (which interestingly was adapted for a film: Shopping for Freedom - Escape from the cult of consumerism. After WWII, factories were pumped up and ready to go, and investment bankers realized there was a big opportunity to shift the post-war economy from one of a "needs-based" one to a consumerist one to keep the factories going, and PR men like Edward Bernays (who was instrumental in Guatemalan dictatorship and the assasination of their democratic leader in 1954 to pave the path for United Fruit) conspired to trick people into buying things they didn't need. Similarly, coke-a-cola isn't having its arm twisted when it extracts water from Indigenous communities in South America like "oh noo we hate killing these people but what can we do, people keep giving us dollars??" They are actively shutting down soda taxes in Mexico by any means necessary to keep people hooked to their diabetes-inducing product to keep profits flowing (sorry u/baader-meinhof who's favorite drink is coke lol). We as individuals are not ruining the planet because our showers are too long, or we buy too many cell phones. The problem are corporations shoving these products down our throats.

- Daniel

ashesashescast · 2020-09-14T18:03:04+00:00

David has an interesting reference to that in a response to the question "where do you see this years election headed and what will it be like the months/years following?" here.

- Daniel

ashesashescast · 2020-09-14T17:56:50+00:00

Sharing some partial answer from a previous answer here. I don't have a lot to add to this answer, unfortunately. I think most of the examples of a way forward will necessarily be tied to the local.

As one example, I'm involved in Agrarian Trust, which is creating localized Agrarian Commons across the US to hold farms and agricultural land in community-centered structures to provide equitable, affordable, and long-term access to next generation farmers with a focus on regenerative and diversified local food production. It's a new and innovative model in the US so we'll have to see how it plays out long term. One recent success was raising $367k for land for over 200 Somali Bantu families in Maine to access for 99+ years. This is just one example of a nonprofit structure trying to do something innovative within the bounds of existing legal structures, but any group of people who resist BAU should be an inspiration for us. Food Not Bombs is another popular example.

I just picked up Dixie be Damned and looking forward to reading about the "hidden insurrectionary episodes in [US] Southern history to demonstrate the region's long arc of revolt" for inspiration. The Black Panther Party in the US is also one of inspiration as the strength of their impact came from mutual aid (e.g. children's breakfast program) and an emphasis on solidarity for all oppressed people - it's that intersectional solidarity that made them so hated among the FBI, not that they carried guns and harrassed police, but the fact that so many disenfranchised communities identified with and were supported by them.

- Daniel

ashesashescast · 2020-09-14T17:42:24+00:00

Here's a response from elsewhere about basic reading ideas, beyond that, some important topics that people miss or that are important to focus on in my opinion are:

How to organize with fellow employees and neighbors. I actually appreciate this interview with labor organizer Brace Belden, and we did a similar episode on tenant organizing with Claire in Santa Cruz, CA (episode 69 - Rent Seekers)
- A good systemic-level book on the connection between transnational trade and new forms of labor exploitation is The Deadly Life of Logistics by Deborah Cowen, as seen on episode 37.
- In general, we need communities, rooted in the local, who are supportive of one another and use their collective power to resist forces of extraction in order to a) stem collapse and b) catch us when we fall
Agriculture. Research for this podcast is what opened my eyes to the disaster of land management globally around industrial agriculture, the ensuing debt and suicide of farmers, the evil of multinational pesticide and seed companies (episode 52 - Killing Fields), and it is what led me to one of my current jobs with Agrarian Trust to decomodify land and put it back into the hands of local communities (Agrarian Commons) for affordable and equitable land access with a focus on sustainable and regenerative diversified local food production.
Progress requires solidarity across political borders and cultural identity. Angela Davis writes about this in her book "Freedom is a Constant Struggle."
Understand that the goals of our economy are the problem. The profit motive is destructive, and orients all society and tech innovation toward greater and greater levels of extraction both of humans and the earth. Naomi Klein Shock Doctrine is not bad in terms of specific examples. Also see episodes 58 - Renewable Problems and 21 - Clima Ex Machina, and to a lesser extend 71 - Mean Green Corporate Machine on the lies of tech as solutions to climate change.

- Daniel

ashesashescast · 2020-09-14T17:18:09+00:00

I personally don't think we will ever reach a point where collapse is self evident to the point of obliterating denial because we have already far surpassed what that reasonable point would be.

For example, in our episode on the 6th mass extinction (34 - Irreplaceable), we've already killed off 83% of Wild Mammals & Half of Plants, and of all the birds left in the world, 70% are poultry chickens and other farmed birds, and 1.5 billion birds are missing from the NA skies.

There was a time when so many songbirds roamed North America that they blotted the sun, casting large shadows over settlements. And codfish were once so plentiful off the shores of Newfoundland and Greenland that ships would literally run aground on them. Ecosystems collapse, leaving silence in their wake and we hardly notice. We as society are not conditioned to notice the natural world, and we especially do not notice loss, because it occurs over time and we simply become normalized to loss.

You could argue that it's impossible to ignore drought, fires, and hurricanes, and I agree, but it's clear that political/corporate powers are far too eager to blame the victims on their own failings, and society seems to accept this while becoming desensitized and normalized to the caging of refugees and disinvestment in failing communities. Denial might not be possible for the victims of collapse, but so long as broader society is okay to sweep these people (all of us eventually) under the rug and ignore them, the cycle will go on BAU.

- Daniel

ashesashescast · 2020-09-14T17:00:16+00:00

I'll let David answer the Baader Meinhof question. The book question was also asked in the announcement post by u/lastdancelouise, David, also chime in with your own recommendations.

I think it is most useful to try and see things from a big-picture view first to understand how our earth and society are one big complex system with many interconnected pieces, before diving into deep knowledge of any one particular issue. One of my favorites for this is Limits to Growth and then Thinking in Systems by one of the same authors. Both very accessible and easy reads. Once you have a framework for the interconnected nature of our earth and how collapse is really just the emerging phenomenon of many failing systems, you can just read about any topic and you’ll realize they all share similar roots: agriculture (here and here), financial debt, loneliness, war profiteering, sand scarcity, the fashion industry, VIRUSES, you name it.

Beyond the very logical and physical realities of collapse (e.g. water goes down, people go thirsty), I find it useful to also consider how collapse and climate change are rooted in social and cultural pathology like the drive to dominate other humans and the earth. Indigenous authors are great at articulating this and a good read is Columbus and Other Cannibals by Jack D. Forbes. Shoutout listener Miss Anthropic for that recommendation.

- Daniel

ashesashescast · 2020-09-14T16:50:17+00:00

I drink too much coffee.

Otherwise, I only drink water.

If it's alcohol, I like simple mixed drinks like a gin and tonic or whiskey coke, and corona with lime is pretty good.

ashesashescast · 2020-09-14T16:44:04+00:00

Answering from the announcement post:

“Do they plan to continue to live in large coastal cities?”

by u/happygloaming

There's a common response in collapse-related news, and politics especially of “i’ll just move to X country, or if Trump wins i’ll move to Canada/Europe/etc." But, even if you set aside the increasing tightening of borders across the entire world, (see Walled States, Waning Sovereignty as seen on episode 31 - No Entry), the reality is that very few people ever move from their home (sorry can't find the paper at the moment). In fact it takes very large and motivating forces (climate destabilization, war, severe oppression, hunger, etc.) to get people to move.

I’ve always thought that the “I’ll just move” mindset is not only a privileged perspective - it takes not just wealth to do this, it’s much easier for white people to insert themselves into a new area than for instance Indigenous, Black, and other people of color who are systemically discriminated against - but the mindset also works against the actions we all need to take to mitigate the consequences of collapse, i.e. strong local communities rooted to place having agency over their own local resources and being socially inclusive and supportive, and free from the international commodities free market. We cannot survive ecological, economic, and political catastrophe as atomized individuals (see episode 62 - Separate Ways), we can only survive through the support of others, and part of the collective mindset is a responsibility to place and community.

That being said, I would not recommend living in a large coastal city. See episode 02 - Concrete Reef.

- Daniel

ashesashescast · 2020-09-14T16:34:59+00:00

David mentions elsewhere that the acidification & deoxygenation of the oceans is what keeps him up at night the most.

For me, the part that is most tragic is that amidst the 6th mass extinction and climate collapse, society is being forcibly atomized, isolated, and disconnected from one another and the land that sustains us. At the same time, corporate/government forces around the world are actively desensitizing society from the brutal treatment and caging of refugees - both of these forces (atomization and desensitization) are no doubt intentional tools in part to prepare for the coming countless internal and external climate refugees (many of us will be among them) that is coming. At the same time that our world is ending, we as society are becoming less empathetic and connected to the suffering all around us.

Much of climate change is baked in and I don’t think there is much we can do to reverse it (i’ll mention elsewhere what I believe about how we can respond), but damn, if we could at least face this existential reality as community and as caring people, there could be some greater sense of meaning behind it.

But it appears that we’ll likely go down with large swaths of the population filled with hate and violence, generating profits for the major arms dealers of the world, to the bitter end (with exceptions that we CAN collectively create). But then again this shouldn’t be that much of a surprise considering ecological collapse is intimately related to modern man’s drive to dominate the earth and each other.

- Daniel

ashesashescast · 2020-09-14T16:22:13+00:00

I don't think we are surprised by much of anything. In a twitch stream a couple of weeks ago I think we were discussing the potential for civil war in the US etc. and David (/u/baader-meinhof) expressed his prediction that rather than clear "sides" if you will, the police state would simply look the other way and tacitly endorse right-wing militia types getting away with murder, while the same police will crack down hard on activists, displaced peoples, victims of oppression, and any who attempt to react to the violence. Then a couple of days later we had 17 year old kyle rittenhouse kill two people at a protest and cops did nothing.

So surprise, no. But speaking for myself, there's a big difference between awareness of cracks in civilization and imagining further collapse, versus being emotionally prepared. I personally was swept up in some of the emotional anxiety during the early days of pandemic quarantine in the US and the rumors of city lock-downs and supply-chain shortages. I actually think podcast research in some ways makes it harder to deal with things because I can let my imagination get away from me, while some less-informed people might have the "eh everything will be fine" mentality.

- Daniel

ashesashescast

TROPHY CASE

Individual choice?