Words of Mass Seduction

Words are powerful things. They can be deployed to woo you into supporting endless wars. Or to make you think that people don’t pull triggers, mental illness does (there has been no established link between mental illness and gun violence).

Words deployed with malice and deceit can make you do other dumb things, like buy junk you don’t need.

Advertisers know all the phrases that trigger your impulse to buy, and they are not afraid to use them against you. 

Being aware of these loaded words can help protect you from needless purchases.

Watch out for the following words on packaging or in advertising:

Unique

Luxurious

VIP

Extended

Triple

Premium

Mega

Authentic

Extra

Platinum

Speedy

Ultimate

Pure

Efficient

New

Advanced

Express 

Super

Intensive

Classic

Superior

Ultra

X-large

Deluxe

These are only some of the words marketers use to fire the desired brain cells that will push us to buy their crappy product.

Don’t be fooled. To be forewarned of the words of mass seduction is to be protected.

Watch for these, and think of other loaded words that may be used by sellers of stuff to fight that little frugal voice in your head.

And that is the end of my super mega, unique, classic (and green!) post. I hope you buy it, so you won't be tricked into buying junk you don't need.

Have an ultra superior day.

Finding A New Place To Grow

Our search for a place to settle more self-sufficiently (and cheaply) in Nova Scotia is off to a slow start, mostly because we do everything slowly. But that is not the only reason for our leisurely pace.

There are a few other reasons not to rush into making one of the largest purchases of our lives.

1. House prices have been dropping since we got here in 2014, and continue to drop.

2. We planted our garden. We can't leave it now, can we?

3. The rental we are currently living is, in many ways, perfect for our needs. Plus, our new landlords are excellent folks. 

4. We have never bought a home before, and it's a scary commitment. 

The house shown above caught our interest as we continue our research into the market here. 

At 79 sq m (850 sq ft), it was listed at $84,000 one year ago. Since then its price had been reduced to $47,500, and it just sold for $42,000. That is a substantial discount, and shows that rushing right now could cost us more.

This particular house, though, was too far from services, requiring a 30 minute drive to the nearest town. It was on a smaller lot (929 sq m/10,000 sq ft), which was sloped. Not the best for a wheelchair. 

On the plus side, the house was in the size range we are looking for, and came with 4 cords of wood. It also has the historical significance of being on the oldest graded road in Canada. 

Granville Road was established in 1606 by Samuel de Champlain, running from Port-Royal to Digby Cape, NS.

Better than that, how about the view across the street?

In between watering and weeding our garden, we will continue to look for a new place to grow and thrive. Until we discover our special place, we will continue to enjoy where we are here and now.

We hope you are doing the same.

Civilizational Collapse - It Happens

Civilizations collapse. It happens. Over and over and over again. It will continue to happen as regularly as the seasons and other cyclical processes. Knowing this allows us to be prepared for change.

The average lifespan of a civilization is 336 years.

Do we think that our current civilization will be the only one in human history to NOT collapse? Given the evidence, that outcome is nothing more than wishful thinking. 

Many thinkers today are warning that we are creating the conditions for our current civilization circus to go down. They are predicting that the big tent will come down, and the show will leave town just about any time now. 

Take some examples from civilizations past:

Name of Civilization, [Approximately how many years it lasted]

- Ancient Egypt, Old Kingdom [505]

- Ancient Egypt, Middle Kingdom [405]

- Ancient Egypt, New Kingdom [501]

- Norte Chico Civilization [827]

- Harappan Civilization (Indus Valley Civilization) [800]

- Kerma [400]

- Akkadian Empire [187]

- Elam Civilization (Awan Dynasty) [157]

- Minoan Civilization (Protopalatial) [500]

- Xia Dynasty [500]

- Third Dynasty of Ur [46]

- Old Assyrian Empire [241]

- Middle Assyrian Empire [313]

- Neo Assyrian Empire [322]

- Elam Civilization (Eparti Dynasty) [210]

- First Babylonian Dynasty [299]

- Old Hittie Empire [250]

- Minoan Civilization (Neopalatial) [250]

- Shang Dynasty [478]

- Mycenae [400]

- Vedic Civilization [1000]

- Middle Hittite Kingdom [70]

- Elam Civilization (Middle Elamite Period) [342]

- New Hittite Kingdom [220]

- Olmecs [1000]

- Phoenicia [661]

- Zhou Dynasty (Western Period) [351]

- Kingdom of Israel and Judah [298]

- Chavin Culture [700]

- Urartu [225]

- Kushite Kingdom [1150]

- Etruscans [404] 
                                                                                                           - Zhou Dynasty (Eastern Zhou Spring Period) [330]

- Zhou Dynasty (Eastern Zhou Warring States Period) [411]

- Ancient Rome [244]

- Elam Civilization (Neo-Elamite Period) [203]

- Phrygia [43]

- Lydia [144]

- Magadha Empire [364]

- Chaldean Dynasty (Babylon) [87]

- Medean Empire [66]

- Orontid Dynasty [540]

- Scythians [800]

- Mahanjanapadas [200]

- Carthage [667]

- Achaemenid Empire [220]

- Roman Republic [461]

- Nanda Empire [24]

- Ptolemaic Egypt [302]

- Classical Greek [265]

 - Hellenistic [177]

- Maurya Empire [137]

- Seleucid Empire [249]

- First Chera Empire [500]

- Early Chola Empire [500]

- Maghada-Maurya [90]

- Parthian Empire [469]

- Satavahana Dynasty [450]

- Qin Dynasty [14]

- Xiongnu Empire [184]

- Han Dynasty (Western Period) [197]

- Numidia [156]

- Teotihuacans [735]

- Kingdom of Armenia [442]

- Hsiung Nu Han [120]

- Sunga Empire [112]

- Andhra [370]

- Aksumite Empire [1100]

- Kanva Dynasty [45]

- Three Kingdoms of Korea [725]

- Saka [140]

- Roman Empire [525]

- Han Dynasty (Eastern Period) [195]

- Kushan [200]

- Bactria [70]

- Ptolemaic [290]

- Liu-Sung [250]

- Gupta [90]

- Hun [100]

- Byzantine [350]

- Yuen-Yuen [30]

- Toba [130]

- White Hun [100]

- Visigoth [240]

- T'u Chueh Turk [90]

- Avar [220]

- Western Turk [70] 

- source

Moral of the story? Civilizations come, and civilizations go. Also, if we continue on our current path, sooner or later, this one will go down, too. 

The HANDY Report, published in 2014, used the latest methods from NASA to come up with a potential collapse in mere decades or sooner. 

Rather than finger one particular group as being the cause, the authors say that today's civilization is doomed because of "the entire fundamental structure and nature of our society." 

Hmm, that won't be easy to fix, so collapse it is.

Then what? How many of us are prepared and resilient enough to handle an event like the total collapse of everything you know and love? 

The good news is that when civilizations collapse, humanity goes on. When it comes right down to it, we are pretty tough. 

Having said that, a large number of people simply will not make it. Those that do will be the most adaptable and prepared, not necessarily the strongest.

The skills required to survive collapse are the same across the ages. Different collapse, different time period, same survival strategy.

So what are the tried and true methods for carrying on when organized human society grinds to a halt? The good news is that they are all known and doable.

If we called it "The Great Simplification", that would give us some idea of what we might expect. Ask the Amish about that. Or preppers. Or homesteaders currently living off-grid.

Or ask the one billion humans that live without dependable power, or without any electricity at all.

The Great Simplification is coming, because civilizational collapses have happened, and will continue to happen. Today, we are rushing toward another one, although the HANDY Report does optimistically remind us that, "a sustainable steady state is shown to be possible in different types of societies".

Can we buck the trend that spans across the ages, and transform our current society into a sustainable steady state system in time to avoid collapse? I don't know, but I am not banking on it. 

While helping build that sustainable future, I will also be preparing for a life without a complex organized society to support me.

"Collapse can be avoided, and population can reach a steady state at maximum carrying capacity if the rate of depletion of nature is reduced to a sustainable level and if resources are distributed equitably." - HANDY Report

Import Replacement And Community Resilience

Farmer's Markets are a good way to support local farmers and producers.

There is a lot of talk about imports these days, mostly because we could be seeing the beginning of the end of global trade as we have known it in recent years. Now is a good time to look at alternatives to trade in order to ensure that the things we need continue to be available in the event international trade slows or stops.

Many communities, including those in Nova Scotia, are considering the advantages of using Import Replacement as a way to strengthen communities and bolster resilience at the same time.

Import replacement, or import substitution, means sourcing as much as you can from local producers in order to reduce dependence on imports. It is a strategy that can be implemented at any time, and it is looking like the sooner the better. 

Doing so after our current trade-heavy system collapses would be too late to avoid much pain and suffering.



Advantages of Import Replacement

• Money stays in the community
• Increased local employment
• Builds community resilience
• Local food is healthier food
• Less reliant on complex, energy intensive supply chains 
• Greater autonomy and self-reliance for communities
• In the event of the collapse of global trade, communities well versed in import replacement will do better than those still reliant on a disappearing supply chain

Disadvantages

• Increases the cost of products/services
• Requires new ways of thinking and doing things that threaten established global interests
• Funding is currently difficult for non-traditional economic approaches 

While it may be currently difficult for a community to impose restraints on economic policies and conditions created by a global market, national governments, transnational corporations and international financial agencies, it has already been done with success in many regions.

In my area of Nova Scotia, it has been suggested that IR may be the answer to reversing the trend of shrinking rural populations, and building strong local economies which serve the people that live there. 

A bonus would be that the area would be better ready to handle what is certain to be turmoil and chaos in global trade now and in the future.

“The benefits of self-sufficiency [or import replacement] will be seen in places where it still exists. So long as the whole supply chain is local, localized production means being able to maintain access to essential goods at a time when obtaining them from overseas may be difficult or impossible. 

It is currently more expensive, but the relative security it can provide can be priceless in a dangerous world. The ability to produce locally does not arise overnight however, especially where there are no stockpiles of components. 

In places where it has been lost, it will take time to regain. There is no time to lose.”

- from The Automatic Earth

Supporting local growers and suppliers of the things we need right now will ensure that they will always be there for us, especially when they are most needed.

Repair Cafe: Can We Fix It?

The worst case of planned obsolescence I have heard of concerns computer printers that have a "pre-programmed failure date" that shuts the device down after so many copies, or when a competitors ink cartridge is used.

Worst case, that is, until hearing that a popular cell phone company intentionally slowed their old phones down so that people would think they needed a new handset. Many people replaced their phones not knowing that all they needed was a new battery.

There is a rising swell of people that are sick and tired of the intentional throw-away economy. They want quality things that can be repaired, and that will last a long time.

A proactive response to all the cheap, made-to-fail crap is The Repair Café. Its objectives are to reduce waste, maintain repair skills, and strengthen social cohesion.

It was initiated by Martine Postma when she organized the first Repair Café in Amsterdam, on October 18, 2009. Fast forward to today, and there are over 1500 repair cafes around the world.

The following is from the Repair Cafe International website:

Repair Cafés are free meeting places and they’re all about repairing things (together). In the place where a Repair Café is located, you’ll find tools and materials to help you make any repairs you need, on clothes, furniture, electrical appliances, bicycles, crockery, appliances, toys, et cetera. 

You’ll also find expert volunteers, with repair skills in all kinds of fields. 

Visitors bring their broken items from home. Together with the specialists they start making their repairs in the Repair Café. It’s an ongoing learning process. 

If you have nothing to repair, you can enjoy a cup of tea or coffee. Or you can lend a hand with someone else’s repair job. 

You can also get inspired at the reading table – by leafing through books on repairs and DIY.

Any time something breaks, the first question should be, "Can we fix it?" Too often companies do not sell replacement parts, or give owners access to repair manuals, making repairs difficult.

The Right To Repair Movement is actively taking on this form of forced obsolescence, and demanding that rules change so that owners can fix the things they have paid for without corporate malfeasance.

Repair Cafes encourage people to "Fix It" before carelessly throwing out and buying new replacements. Not repairing when we can means perpetuating the cycle of disposability while supporting unscrupulous manufacturers.

Is there a Repair Cafe near you. Check the map here.

Or perhaps you would like to initiate a Repair Cafe in your own community. See here.

Welcome to the Repair Revolution. Fix it, don't nix it.

Happy Messy New Year

Life is messy, and that is a good thing.

I have always thought that the luxurious, easy, prosaic predictable life was the kiss of death. Humans were designed to be challenged. We are actually good at it, and grow stronger through overcoming adversity.

To be easy is to be on auto-pilot. Challenges build character, creativity, and resilience.

That is why I am looking forward to a messy new year in 2018. This year I will enjoy slogging through the mud pit of life, interacting with real things and real people. I will get messy, and I will know that I am alive.

Nassim Nicholas Taleby said, “Provided we have the right type of rigor, we need randomness, mess, adventures, uncertainty, self-discovery, near-traumatic episodes, all these things that make life worth living..."

The quote continues, "...compared to the structured, fake, and ineffective life of an empty-suit CEO with a preset schedule and an alarm clock." But not many of us are CEOs, while all of us are expected to be worker drone/ultra-consumers.

I would amend that to read, "...compared to the structured, fake, and ineffective life of empty consumers with a preset list of aspirations that keep them diligently working at unloved jobs and careers."

Life is increasingly random, messy, and uncertain with weekly or daily near-traumatic episodes. And I don't think it's just me. We might as well make all that work for us, and embrace it as part of the human experience.

Will I have an easy, uneventful and predictable new year? I hope not.

An adventurous and rigorous simple life provides everything that makes life worth living.

Happy simple messy new year to everyone. Linda and I look forward to sharing it all with you in the coming year.

Emergency Solidarity

I have been watching footage from hurricane Harvey, starting in real time when the storm made land fall. In spite of the horror of the storm and ensuing fallout for the people of Houston, I saw more good news stories than I have in a long time. Emergency solidarity was everywhere.

I didn't have time to recover from my "bystander PTSD" from Harvey before Irma cranked up to a Category 5 storm. Now we are seeing emergency solidarity arising in Florida, and the Caribbean, and who knows where next. Such beauty in the face of overwhelming struggle and hardship.

Rebecca Solnit calls them "disaster communities" in her book, A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster. They are groups of people that spontaneously come together in mutual aid and support in hard times.

“The map of utopias is cluttered nowadays with experiments by other names, and the very idea is expanding. It needs to open up a little more to contain disaster communities. These remarkable societies suggest that, just as many machines reset themselves to their original settings after a power outage, human beings reset themselves to something altruistic, communitarian, resourceful and imaginative after a disaster, that we revert to something we already know how to do. The possibility of paradise is already within us as a default setting.”  

- Rebecca Solnit

Emergencies wipe away all the artificial ways that we get separated from each other - there is no time for silliness like that. We are forced to face the simple facts of survival, and the outcome is cooperation and solidarity. Our true nature is revealed, and it looks much different than our selfishness-based economic system.

Emergencies blow away all considerations of race, gender, wealth, orientation, class, and religious or political affiliation, and we realize that we are all members of the same community. We are all part of the human community. 

Because we have been trained to think in self-serving, competitive ways in order to fulfill our role as cogs in the consumer machine, we are amazed at the outpouring of help from total strangers. All of a sudden people become much less materialistic. Who cares about stuff when you are thrilled just to be alive and feeling connected to something bigger than yourself?

Profit as a driving concept simply does not exist when we come together in a common cause, like a disaster. Quite the opposite - abundance rules the day. Just look at the tons of donations, the money that is donated, and the volunteerism that follows adversity. I didn't see any rescuers charging people to be rescued. Why not?

It seems that capitalism does have limits, and it dares not enter into disaster communities. If it did, it would seem exactly as it is - crass, self-serving, and opposite to our natural desire to work together with our neighbours for the betterment of our communities. For free.

What if every day life was as altruistic and cooperative as what occurs every time we are met with extraordinary, life-threatening circumstances? What if we were satisfied with the magic of being alive, and saw our stuff for what it really it - piles of distracting crap?

The way we come together in isolated emergencies the world over, is the way humanity needs to come together on a grand scale to ensure our collective survival on this planet. That is the big emergency that should unify us all.

When I see the resilience, love and hard work of helpers after disasters, I feel I am seeing the true nature of humanity. We can do this thing. We can make everything better. Together. It is our default setting.