Words That Come To Mind.

"Action is the antidote to despair." In enough ways, life really is what you make it. I've experienced that. I want to experience more of it. I am. I have redirected some of my anxious energy. Still working on that.

I said something on Facebook that really encouraged somebody recently...

"My lifestyle is all about motion in good directions right now. I think focusing on end-goals is discouraging when you consider all the data. You can always move in a good direction. Till you can't move anymore."

Near-Term Extinction & The Natural World: Be With The Dying.

Natural world still being killed by the society I am a part of. Still hurts. I still cry some days. Can only hold a stone face for so long.

A friend of mine died of cancer not too long ago. A couple of years I guess. It was really rough. Saw him like three days before he passed. He used to be such a strong guy. Solid, hardworking, outgoing, creative... and there he was in that bed, skinnier than me for a change. Weak, making strange faces, talking like he was more drunk than I'd ever seen him. That's saying a lot 'cause he could drink, man. Yet I was still there. Hardly able to look at him. Being with him. Talking as much as I could without bursting into tears in front of him. Even though it was a difficult meeting, I'm glad I had that last chance to be with him and I believe my friend was glad about it also.

The natural world is dying/being killed. We are in the midst of an unprecedented (anthropogenic) mass extinction. Humans are most certainly not immune, which would not bother me so much if I did not have children. I have been getting back into the wild more as autumn thickens. Getting my boys out into the wild more. Had a problem with that for a while. Didn't want to look at the stained creek, the woods which will eventually succumb to rampant desertification as civilization does its best to kill everything that matters to non-extremophiles... I am getting better at being with the dying. I appreciate it and I like to think that it appreciates me as well.

None of this extinction business is easy. My guess is that as things run their course, the only organisms left will be the ones that thrive in conditions impossible for 99.9% of life on Earth. Extremophiles. Those things that live on crazy chemicals and love crazy temperatures. Maybe they will get a chance to develop into something with intelligence like ours. But does that even matter? What good are intelligence, free will, self-awareness and all that if we can't avoid creating things like Fukushima, methane clathrate release and blah, blah, blah?

Maybe I've said all I can say for now. I will continue to be with the dying...

Debris Hut Workshop This Weekend.

EVENT PAGE!! ...See you this Saturday if you can make it. HOORAY!

It must be the seasonal change. I miss all things primitive. Coming home, sweet wilderness...

Okay! Fall/winter teaching season coming up. Planning a small group (15 or so) weekend primitive wilderness skills camp for October, but I do (and actually prefer) one on one tutorial settings. Or anything in between. More groups can be formed as needed if you like learning in groups and this first one fills up. Aiming for mid-October and looking for an event host. (I'll teach hosts for free.) Stay tuned/holla: jasonhogans (at) gmail (dot) com. 313-two/five/eight-1401.

LOVE.

The deepest love is not concerned with outcomes. It keeps going no matter what goes on around it. Love on, lovers.

Limits To Prepping: Inevitable Human Extinction.

Hmm,

When I started this blog, I thought I'd be helping people to "make it through the bottleneck" and build new culture on the other side. I don't feel like this is possible anymore. I think the bottleneck is too tight. I'm not saying this to be a downer. This is self-therapy and an attempt to help anyone who is dealing with the possibility of inevitable short-term human extinction.

Why do I now feel that humanity won't make it through the collapse of industrial civilization?...

1. Fatal release of nuclear, biological and chemical threats when the specialists stop showing up for work, or when the grid fails long enough to thwart containment of NBC threats.

2. Runaway climate change will make Earth uninhabitable as tipping points are crossed and feedbacks go into overdrive.

3. We are in the middle of the latest mass extinction. Yeah, it's pretty much caused by human activity. An ecological holocaust is now taking place. Hundreds of species go extinct EVERY DAY and we humans are but a strand in the delicate web of life! We are SO not immune to this phenomenon.

So why do anything? Why not drink yourself into oblivion or shoot your brains out? Transition Towns, permaculture, prepping and primitive skills education are totally worthless in helping us survive these ultimate near-term challenges. They are too large. There's no place for humans on a biologically bankrupt, toxic, overheated planet. None. Transhumanoid borgbots might have a great time here, but not humans. TOAST. Uh oh!!

I'll tell you why I still do what I do...

'Cause it feels good. 'Cause I notice that I get excessively sad when I'm inactive. 'Cause I enjoy the company of others doing the same stuff. 'Cause everybody dies anyway and like I said before, ALL SPECIES will eventually be toast when the Sun goes goofy in a few billion years or whatever. It's all temporary. All you ever really have is this moment. I'm serious! The past doesn't exist and neither does the future. Society's concept of time messes with our souls. I do what I do because it feels lame to go along with the customary flow. I don't like feeling lame! I am fulfilled by what I do. No, it won't save the world. It still fulfills me. My own quiet non-rebellion of simple, earthy living. As much as I can. More feels better. Dominant culture still gives me the creeps. I can't go whole hog with it even though it surrounds me, permeates me, affects me in more ways than I understand.

Does this make any sense? Hope so. Comments are appreciated. Might update/follow this post up later. Take care.

NewCultureEarth Channel on YouTube.

My YouTube Channel has a few videos and I will add more! About all kinds of things. Loosely themed. Completely relevant. Next Paradigm Express... If we don't extinct our own species to death first. Which would be fine, really.

CHANNEL!!!

I enjoy rambling on videos. Got a little lazy, but will resume. Will show some skills and stuff, too. ;-) Thanks for paying attention for a moment.

(BIG LOVE)

2012!

I'm renewing my commitment to rewild. I feel incomplete, unfinished. Paused on rewilding and explored modern emergency preparedness. Modern prep jazz is cool, but not the whole picture. "Naked into the wilderness." Yeah. Need to get back into rewilding for the health of my soul. Need to bloom where I am planted, follow heart, non-do. Can't focus on dominant culture. Makes my heart sick. Focus on a vision instead. Make the vision real in my own life. Meditate on the beauty of the vision for motivation. Mmm.

Beauty via love! Life Well Lived...

How I Deal With Our Converging Challenges.

I can't (nor should I) hide it... Resource depletion, nuclear insanity, economic turbulence, natural disasters, political malfeasance, cosmic anomalies and other challenges have been really difficult for me to handle since about 2005. Sometimes it seems like everything is going nuts at once. Just when I thought I was on the right track with my response(s) to the world situation, I found more holes in my approach. The truth is that there will always be things that we cannot know or anticipate or prepare for or counteract.

What's a human to do? Here's my current take...

We are all part of the same whole. There aren't really any separate things, humans just tend to have inflated senses of self and like to come up with lots of names and distinctions. My personal human experience had a beginning and it will have an end. I think about a battery. You put a battery in a device. The battery has a life span. Batteries release their energy and allow work to be done, then they "die." Are humans really that much different? Doesn't seem like it to me. We do things over the course of our lives, then our individual human lives are done. It's not sad, it's not noble, it's just the way it is. If you look at yourself as a battery, what work will you put your energy into? It happens naturally, if you let it. Pay attention to the way your life flows, has flowed. Be able to quiet your individual mind and see your life as if it were a drop of water rolling down a parked car's windshield. It goes where gravity takes it. It encounters specks of dirt, bird droppings, whatever, merges with other drops, continues to flow downward, blah, blah, oozing off the car's wheel, eventually reaching the ground full of who knows what, evaporating, leaving what it accumulated during its life, merging with other vapors and coming back down again as a raindrop...

"I do my utmost to attain emptiness; I hold firmly to stillness. The myriad creatures all rise together And I watch their return. The teaming creatures All return to their separate roots. Returning to one's roots is known as stillness. This is what is meant by returning to one's destiny. Returning to one's destiny is known as the constant. Knowledge of the constant is known as discernment."

...I like the Tao Te Ching a lot. This verse above talks about various "manifestations" emerging and then returning to "the source." It sits really well with me. Another translation reads, "watch the turmoil of beings, but contemplate their return." Looking at what we know of the universe, looking at Earth history, human history, I end up with the image of a bubbling, swirling mass. Lots of eddies, flares and other events, but ultimately it's the same, single everystuff.

I think that's all I have for now. Bear with me. I'm feeling wide. I hope this makes sense to someone. Take care and be who you are. Do what you naturally do. You'll know it's happening when you're not trying as hard as you were when you wanted to give up.

It truly is all good.

Seedbombing For The Afterculture.

You can make seedballs packed with solid choices for no-maintenance, aftercultural perennial crops in your bioregion! As the established machine order becomes less and less reliable, these guerrilla-gardened "crops" can be harvested and enjoyed as they spread about the post-collapse landscape.

Primitive Innovation.

I think we should avoid any sort of dogmatism in the world of wilderness living skills.

For example... One of my teachers frowns upon the use of two-stick hearthboards, but they work, and their use in a wilderness situation could mean the difference between life/death/thriving/having needs met, so it behooves us to know the technique, eh?

The basic principle in primitive fire-starting is usually to make a pile of hot, dry dust from natural materials, which becomes a coal, which you put into a tinder bundle to start a righteous fire. Hand drill, bow drill, fire plow, whatever.

It's ALL ABOUT having a grasp of the basic principles!!

I've talked about fire, but the same applies to other aspects of wilderness living, like shelter...

With shelter, you primarily want to shed water/moisture and retain body heat. If you're really awesome, you'll leave an open space up top to vent exhaust from an inside fire. WOOT!!! Take this understanding and use your own creativity! It's downright fun.

Learn WHY a certain method works and you're free to experiment and innovate!

Stick To Your Principles Despite Apparent Outcome.

Nobody knows EXACTLY what's gonna happen throughout The Unveiling. There will be surprises. Unexpected plot twists. Live according to your highest ideals as much as possible. I feel better when I do this. Much better! Don't grind your teeth because of how you think things will play out. Details will elude your ability to predict them. You just can't know. Unless you have a crystal ball or something. Simply do you. It's all cumulative. Play your part in the universal symphony. It adds richness. Thickens up the soup. Yum.

I would not have predicted that an Oak Park gardener would end up in Time Magazine and draw national attention to the right to garden on your front lawn free of interference from city regulations.

Everybody dies. It's the quality of living that matters. How will you live?

Long-Term Grid Kill (Solar Storm) + Nuclear Plants = 442 Meltdowns Worldwide?

The Fukushima nuclear disaster has brought attention to the fact that nuclear power plants become ticking time bombs if the grid goes down for an extended period of time.

Do an internet search for "solar storm nuclear power plants." Sift through the results and ponder how we might avoid the premature end of planetary life if something like a solar storm were to take out the electrical grid. Many experts on space weather & whatnot say that another 1859-style solar storm (or greater) is a given. Not if, but when. Most likely in 2012 or 2013.

Is this something we should leave up to our leaders? Can we trust them to take care of this imminent problem? What should we do as conscious and compassionate humans?

I wish more people were willing to talk about this and work toward solutions together. Modern society has harnessed the energy of the Sun through nuclear power generation, and now the Sun is poised to eliminate the control we have over this energy.

I'll probably come back to this topic later.

Foraging On Organic Farms.

Hot tip for foragers: Establish relationships with organic farmers and ask if it's okay to take some of their wild edibles. They'll love you. They pay their workers to remove these plants and consider them weeds. We know better than to dismiss them. We treasure them! Organic CSAs are especially friendly. They deal with the public a lot more than non-CSA farms. Good luck. I'm about to start doing this ASAP.

Just remember to have some empathy for the farmer. Remove entire plants, including roots. They don't want these plants to compete with their crops. You could either process harvested plants right away or save live plants in pots or planters and establish them in the area of your choosing. Transplant some to your yard to start your own wild foods garden.

I've become more familiar with many new wild edibles through my work on farms.

Taking Primitive Principles & Running With Them.

The world of primitive skills is a freer world than we are used to. No zoning issues or neighborhood association troubles. No regulations or standardization. If it works and makes sense, do it. Pay attention to the principles behind your primitive projects. Once you learn the underlying principles of the projects you're working on, you can adapt them to the situation you're in and tailor them to your preferences.

Surviving or Wilderness Living?

I don't always like the term "survival skills." My favorite term for what I practice and teach is "primitive wilderness living skills." When I hear the word "survival," I get an image of someone barely making through a rough situation and not enjoying life very much at all. When I hear "primitive wilderness living," I get an image of people being self-sufficient in amazing surroundings - with none of the excess complexity and soul-suffocating concerns of modern life.

What do you think when you hear these words?

Simply Being in Natural Areas.

I have practiced a few primitive skills. Aspects of hide processing. Edible, medicinal & useful plants. Making thread/string/rope. Tracking animals. Building shelter. Starting fires. Blah, blah. Out of everything, it is being at peace in wilderness areas that I am most proud of.

Yep. Being in wild areas and being at peace. Not worried about that super-stupid horror movie you saw that had people getting murdered in the woods. (Everyone that I've met in the woods has been quite cool. I grew up in a city called Detroit and there was way more murder going on there than I ever experienced in the woods. If you're THAT worried, get a CCW.) Not worried about social stigmas. Seduced by the slow, seasonal changes of a given area. Green tones transition into citrus hues. Shoot, fruit & seed. Thick, verdant foliage to regal, woody frames...

Be with the natural world. As much as possible. Become addicted to it. At all times. Spend quiet time with it. Just you & your breath. Pay attention to your breath and the wind through the trees. It's related. You are alive on Earth. Love it.

Observations On The Inefficiencies Of Agriculture.

I work on an organic farm. It's a great job for lots of reasons.

While weeding leeks, I paid attention to how many edible, medicinal or otherwise useful plants ("weeds") were ripped up and tossed into the space between rows to be walked on by farm workers and baked into oblivion by the hot sun.

What a waste.

I've been brainstorming of a way to avoid treating these plants so awfully. Plenty of hungry, poor people could use these plants.

Due to the diminishing returns of modern food production methods, I see these plants playing a larger role in people's diets as time goes on.

Collapse Does Not Happen Everywhere At Once.

It happens one person at a time. When you can no longer maintain your status quo, it has happened to you.

It happens one neighborhood at a time. When streets are abandoned or bulldozed, it has happened in that neighborhood.

It happens one city/town/state at a time. When a city/town/state can no longer provide services for its citizens, it has happened in that city/town/state.

It happens one country at a time. When the people flatten the capitol gates and overwhelm the powers that be, it has happened in that country.


...We must carry the tragic story of industrial civilization into whatever future we find ourselves in together so that it is never repeated. We must hold the seeds of the afterculture in our deepest being. We must practice AND preach. We must not have our hearts hardened by the spirit of the passing age. We must keep our integrity and stay rooted in love. We must enjoy the beauty and unspoiled richness of the natural world together.