The Ability to be Resilient

What is Resilience?

Resilience: capacity of a system to experience shocks while retaining essentially the same function, structure, feedbacks, identity, without shifting into a different regime. (http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol9/iss2/art5/)


One of the key components of the Transition Movement is the effort to build local resilience. You probably are familiar with the word, but what does "resilience" mean in the context of Transition, and why is it important?

It's hard to deny that there is turmoil in the world. To try and deny that we affect and are affected by that turmoil is unwise and an effort to ignore the plain truth. We all see gas prices fluctuate wildly as a result of political, economic and environmental turmoil. Whether those fluctuations are based on real factors, or speculative shenanigans, the reality is the effect of socio-politico-economic stressors on our lives are real and perceptible to all. Our participation in the global economy also affects those factors as we perpetuate the refinement or manufacture of goods and services by casting our economic votes at them.

Western foreign policy, which favors Western economic beneficiaries, drives much of the political and economic activity in the world, at the expense of the poor of the world, both foreign and domestic. The expenses exacted from the poor include declining environmental conditions, reduced availability to affordable and healthy food, scarcity of clean and adequate water supplies and social oppression from various sources.

It sounds as if I am describing conditions in Sub-saharan Africa, but these conditions exist in American cities and towns with increasing frequency. Let us not deceive ourselves by saying bad things cannot, and are not, occurring in our own backyards.

A recent Bloomberg article by Max Abelson, while at first seeming to have been mispublished from the Onion, addresses the financial trials of wealthy Americans. Its hard to sympathize with people who are bemoaning the the reality that their kids will no longer be able to attend a posh private school while your own children have no option except public schools; while even that option is becoming to expensive for you and your family.

However, the fact that the wealthiest Americans are feeling painful economic pressures is a disturbing indicator that our economy is in distress. No one has been spared the bumps and bruises doled out by the Great Recession. The poor have less margin for error in economic matters. So it seems as if the wealthy could scale back and remain resilient in the face of the turmoil of the modern world because of their greater financial flexibility. But what of the poor and what of those who refuse to scale back?

Resilience comes in many forms, and through conscious efforts to make oneself, one's family and one's community resilient we can all persist beyond the current trials. To do so we must understand the truth of the matter, and we must move forward with purpose toward a goal of resilience.

We must let go of what E.F. Schumacher calls a "predatory attitude which rejoices in the fact that 'what were luxuries for our fathers have become necessities for us.'" Wisdom, in the context of resilience, comes from being able to discern between needs and wants and being able to let go of the wants when the prohibit the acquisition of those things we need. To refuse to sacrifice wants for needs is unwise and destroys your innate resilience.



Another definition of the word resilience is this: ability to recover readily from illness, depression, adversity, or the like; (© Random House, Inc. 2012)

"The ability to recover from...adversity;" this is what I want to discuss.

Two things we need to define for the purposes of this discussion are: 1) the unique adversity we face today; and 2) what is meant by resilient recovery . I will also address our ability to recover. There is no point in delving into the other two issues without examining whether or not we still have the ability to turn things around and begin rebuilding our confidence and sufficiency as a community of people: local, national, and global.

I keep using words like "turmoil," "trials," and "adversity." Some would argue that there is nothing wrong with the current state of affairs, especially in the Developed World. I choose not to address those arguments at this time. My purpose is not to refute that particular notion because I believe the majority of people are rational and can see the truth of the matter. We've had to take off our shades because the future doesn't look quite as bright as it once did.

Mankind is testing the limits of carrying capacity of the earth. My Christian beliefs don't allow me to accept that humanity is capable of omnicide (self-destruction of a species), but I do believe that social and environmental calamity is possible. History shows that massive die-offs are both possible and factual. Millions of people have died since the dawn of time due to plagues, natural disasters and human caused wars and societal collapses. There is nothing Biblical, nor of the temporal realm, which precludes the possibility of catastrophic population die-offs as a result of human action.

We live on a finite planet. It is a sphere unconnected by any physical bridge to another such world. The finite nature of our Terran home implies hard limits to how much we can grow in population, technology, economics, and within our own ecosystem. And, as Wendell Berry writes in his Harper's essay "Faustian Economics:" "We are not likely to be granted another world to plunder in compensation for our pillage of this one." And as the late Ray Anderson repeated often in his book Confessions of a Radical Industrialist there "there [is] no place called 'away' for throwing things."

If we continue to take raw materials and turn them into single serving utensils bound for our exploding landfills we risk our very health and quality of life. If we continue to burn fossil fuels as the current rate we "threaten civilization," but (continuing in the words of E.F. Schumacher) "if we squander the capital represented by living nature around us, we threaten life itself." We cannot continue to convert nature into garbage.

Again, looking to Wendell Berry as he concludes the aforementioned essay: “Whichever way we turn, from now on, we are going to find a limit beyond which there will be no more. To hit these limits at top speed is not a rational choice. To start slowing down, with the idea of avoiding catastrophe, is a rational choice, and a viable one if we can recover the necessary political sanity.”

Mr. Berry is describing the choice to embrace Transition and to seek resilience as a preventative mindset, not merely a survival instinct in the face of calamity. We can find ourselves resilient in the midst of an apocalyptic nightmare, but how much better to practice resilience in the relative comfort of our modern framework before we face a post-apocalyptic landscape?

The adversity we face in our world today seems to primarily be economic in nature, but if we look deeper we see that the root of our current "financial" crisis is in fact in a scarcity of resources, particularly energy resources, and not necessarily because of some fictional numbers in some Wall Street ledger. As our energy needs increase, our access to finite sources of easy and cheap energy (fossil fuels) becomes more dear and, as well all know, dearness begets an increase in value.

I will not delve into the tangential exploration of the hows and the whys of our resource scarcity. That is a study in itself. So for the time being, let's agree that the adversities we face are related to energy supply and production, and ultimately the economics of energy and the vast implication of said economics, and then move on to the next factor in our resilience equation: recovery.

We hear a lot about "recovery" from the talking heads. From a medical standpoint, recovery would be considered a return to health. And this is a good thing for an organism in distress. However, we would never consider the recurrence of cancer after a period of remission as a recovery. And yet, the arguments that are being made and the assurances we are being given in regards to a return to our previous prosperity reflect just that sort of situation. To return to pre-2008 conditions would be a return to a terminal decline of our socioeconomic health as a species.

On the other hand, recovery is a necessity at this point in human history. We must return to social, economic and environmental health. But we must set our sights on health, and not growth. A mature organism ceases to increase in size, ceases to grow beyond certain physical limits, and yet those with the most vested interest in our corporatist system would have us believe that encouraging a cancer to grow would serve us best.

We must change the thinking, and the collective assertion, that we can simply return to business as usual without any kind of sacrifice or consequence. It was Albert Einstein who said: "Problems cannot be solved by the same thinking used to create them." If we haven't learned, and incorporated into our vision for ourselves, the reality that exponential growth is dangerous to our very civilization then we are doomed, not only to repeat the economic arrhythmia of 2008, but to exceed the damage tenfold in the near future with greater catastrophe.

If we are to "recover" from our recent and current societal maladies we must look to a time when humanity had not yet exceeded the carrying capacity of the earth, and to scale back our consumption and development to sustainable levels. Recovery will come with costs. Those costs may be difficult to swallow at first glance; once they're accurately tallied.

Finally, do we have the ability to recover? If we have lost the ability to recover from our adversities then we are not resilient, and we cannot become resilient through any force of will. The only way to accurately ascertain the truth of the matter is to look back once adversity is overcome. That's not the most palatable answer for most. If it's too late then why make the effort and further expend energy that could be divert towards personal survival, right?

Our ability to recover is also rooted in our ability to agree on what our true challenges are, and what the answers to those challenges should be. If we cannot work together as small communities, nations and as a species toward a singular vision of how humanity can live sustainably, then our destiny lies in catastrophic population controls. Our world is not immune from war, famine, plague and natural disasters which can, and most certainly will, thin the herd, so-to-speak.

If we do not begin, today, making an effort to increase our chances of overcoming both past trials and the adversity yet to come then we may forever lose the ability to recover fully. We must attain true sufficiency—not self-sufficiency, because to prevail against looming realities we must work together—in order to ensure that humanity can sustain a global civilization for our heirs. And short of that success, we must work diligently in our own communities, and with our closest neighbors, to increase the chances that our places and our peoples will persist no matter what travails come our way.

That is not to say that communities should build walls and refuse to cooperate with other communities in their region and around the world. The best strategy to see the most people living resilient lives must start first with individuals working toward their own self-interests, then working toward community interests and finally working toward global interests. This is not a difficult process to understand, as they are all inextricably linked across all levels. What truly benefits the needs of the individual, absent of greed and envy, benefits the community and the world. A resilient community is made up of resilient individuals working toward a common goal.

I am certain that our local resilience is not yet lost. I have hopes that the US, and other Developed countries, as well as the global community, can rally around the pressing issues of Peak Oil, climate disruption and economic tribulation while the ability still exists to do so. Resilience is useful.

On Social Equity

Societies form, and societies grow into civilizations, to take advantage of the benefit of collective effort of individuals. Yet when a civilization denies the benefit of that collective effort to any individuals within the civilization it denies it's own civility.

This is why we must not measure collective wealth and prosperity by looking at the rich and powerful, but at those at the opposite end of the spectrum: the poor of any civilization. If the relatively poor in a society are prosperous, then the society as a whole could be considered prosperous.

But if we celebrate only the wealthy upper end of society then we are endorsing the exploitative powers of a minority over the vulnerabilities of many.

But for true social equity, since we do truly live in a global society in modern times, we must look at the world as a whole, not just to the limits of our own shores and borders. If the poor of the world are not truly prosperous, then we are not prosperous as a species. Only some have more exploitative leverage to draw wealth unto themselves.

The three legs of the stool in sustainability include: economic, environmental and (social) equity issues. I sat in on a panel discussion last Friday in Boulder with Jared Polis and Nancy Sutley (she leads the White House Council on Environmental Quality) and during the discussion all of the focus was on environmental and economic concerns. The third leg of the stool, as is most often the case, was ignored as a crucial component of true sustainability.

We can't ignore the social impacts of our choices. Our choices, here there and everywhere, affect other people. We can't prosper at the expense of the Third World and remain blameless in our own destruction.

Sci-Fi Non-Review: The Dispossessed by Ursula K Le Guin

I just finished Ursula K Le Guin's Hugo and Nebula winner The Dispossessed. I did thoroughly enjoy the book, and despite some delays on my part, I read it fairly quickly.

My first experience with Le Guin's work was in my sci-fi literature class at EKU. One of the required readings was The Left Hand of Darkness. At the beginning of the class it was the reading I was least enthused to tackle, but halfway through the book was enthralled. I always wanted to go back and read it again but have since misplaced my copy.

During that semester I found a copy of A Wizard of Earthsea in the campus book store for 50¢ and snatched it up immediately. I consumed it in no time and absolutely loved the short book. Again, I somehow misplaced my (cheap) copy, though I recently found another copy almost as cheap.

So why am I refusing to review The Dispossessed presently? Much like The Left Hand of Darkness I feel I need a second reading to better understand the book. I rarely use study guides or commentaries to help me understand a book, and even if I do resort to the viewpoints of others to aid in my own understanding, I like to do it after my initial reading so as not to spoil my own "first experience" with the work. First Experience is something I tend to hold sacred in regards to fiction. I value my own impressions of the characters, my own visualizations of the settings and beings portrayed, over those of others. That's why I will always try to read a book before watching a film adaptation, if I think it is a work I will enjoy. I also think this is why I am strongly critical of subsequent portrayals.

There are a lot of things I like about the book. The nature of a dual-planet system is terribly interesting, the duality of the Cetians culture, the interplay between the Urrasti and Anarresti and the history behind the separation of the two is engaging and worthy of further understanding.

The one real thread that caught my attention regarded the shortcomings of the anarchist Odonian society. The anarchists left Urras to settle on Anarres, which is a much less suitable planet for sustaining life. While they founded their society on anarchist principles, Shevek—the book's protagonist—discovers that social constraints have evolved that increase bureaucracy, centralization and alienation. While the subtitle of the book is An Ambiguous Utopia, we see that Anarres is by no means the perfect world as it struggles with resource scarcity, environmental health issues and the growth pains of a new society.

So there you go, my non-review review. I promise, once I give it a good second reading and read some further commentary I will slam dunk this review for your yawning pleasure.



Awards:

Nebula Award for Best Novel 1974
Hugo Award 1975
Locus Award 1975
Nominated for the John W Campbell Memorial Award 1975

Sci-Fi Review: "The Waveries" Short Story

I was unfamiliar with Frederic Brown until I picked up "The Waveries." But it turns out I was. He wrote a short story entitled "Arena" on which a Star Trek episode of the same name was based.

And then there is the exquisitely brief "Answer", which seems to have been an inspiration for Douglas Adams' Deep Thought. While hardly more than a thumbnail sketch, it gets the point across rather well.

"The Waveries" is one of those stories that hook you and reel you in before you know it. It has some great imagery, and a great resolution, though it leaves you with some mystery and a few questions left unanswered.

I was hooked at the third paragraph:

"George Bailey wrote advertising for the radio. The only thing he hated worse than advertising was radio."

"The Waveries" describes the story of an invasion of earth by beings not quite organic, drawn to the planet through space by radio and other transmissions that had drifted through space. Caught up in the "scent" the wave-like beings surround the earth and begin siphoning off any electricity generated anywhere on the planet, effectively de-industrializing the earth overnight. And the story takes us just far enough ahead to see that humanity adapts and rebuilds society as best they can.

Once George Bailey and Pete Mulvaney, a recently unemployed research technician, realize that machines are going to be defunct very quickly due to the "invasion" by the 'vaders (short for invaders) they start to come to some logical conclusions:

"George shook his head slowly, in wonder. He said, 'Streetcars and buses, ocean liners-Pete, this means we’re going back to the original source of horsepower. Horses. If you want to invest, buy horses.
Particularly mares. A brood mare is going to be worth a thousand times her weight in platinum.'
'Right. But don’t forget steam. We’ll still have steam engines, stationary and locomotive.'
'Sure, that’s right. The iron horse again, for the long hauls. But Dobbin for the short ones. Can you ride, Peter?'
'Used to, but I think I’m getting too old. I’ll settle for a bicycle. Say, better buy a bike first thing
tomorrow before the run on them starts. I know I’m going to.'
'Good tip. And I used to be a good bike rider. It’ll be swell with no autos around to louse you up.'"

From that point Brown begins to outline a somewhat feasible plan for any government faced with industrial collapse. Was Kunstler inspired by Brown in writing his "World Made by Hand" series?

The story jumps forward in time to 1981 where we find George Bailey—again—waiting for the train to come in to the small town he's adopted as home. And off the train steps a tall figure. On the buggy ride back to George's house he asks his old friend Pete Mulvaney:

"How’s New York?”
“Fine, George. Down to its last million people, and stabilizing there. No crowding and plenty of room for everybody. The air-why, it’s better than Atlantic City, without gasoline fumes.”
“Enough horses to go around yet?”
“Almost. But bicycling’s the craze; the factories can’t turn out enough to meet the demand. There’s a cycling club in almost every block and all the able-bodied cycle to and from work. Doing ‘em good, too; a few more years and the doctors will go on short rations.”
“You got a bike?”
“Sure, a pre-vader one. Average five miles a day on it, and I eat like a horse.”

"The Waveries" starts off in typical pulp sci-fi tones, but it offers a surprising twist, and an even more surprising glimpse of the post-apocalyptic world that that would be a sure effect of most of the pulp alien invasion stories of the '50s that never seemed to get much press. It was nominated for a retro Hugo for best short story in 1996 and lost to Hal Clement's "Uncommon Sense." The story was originally published in 1945.

Sci-Fi Review: A Canticle for Leibowitz

[Spoiler warning throughout]

Despite seeing A Canticle for Leibowitz pop up in science fiction literary environs for quite some time, I had always resisted picking it up because the premise didn't interest me much. Frankly, the Catholic slant turned me off.

But as I worked to refine my Hugo and Nebula reading list I kept Canticle on it time and time again. I could never bring myself to totally remove it, recognizing that it is highly regarded as a classic post-apocalyptic work and being favorable to that particular sub-genre over most others, so it has remained.

A pre-Christmas trip to the used book store yielded a lightly used and dirt cheap copy, so I tucked it in my pile and brought it home. Oddly, Canticle drifted to the top of the pile, and when I reached for my next book to read over the holidays I decided to go ahead and get it out of the way.

The book is well written, engaging and is tinged with some intelligent humor along the way. I could almost imagine some of the more light-hearted passages being acted out by somber Monty Python members. But the deeper story of Leibowitz slowly unfolds, and the backstory concerning the mythical Flame Deluge is finally revealed in a way the modern reader can understand.

The religious undertones aren't as distracting as I'd imagined they'd be. And in fact, the context of the story makes sense to lead the action forward even as Dom Paulo led the blue-headed goat to Benjamin. As a Catholic convert, Miller writes what he knows, and he both knows and writes it well. The story is somewhat believable, despite the fantastical premise.

In the initial section, "Fiat Homo" (let there be man), we are introduced to Brother Francis, the discoverer of an important piece of Memorabilia from our own time period and Benjamin, the Old Jew. We are also witness to the canonization of Saint Leibowitz, a 20th century technician, who, after the Flame Deluge attempted to preserve 20th century technological documents for the benefit of future generations. He was martyred for his efforts.

We then move into the meat of the book, "Fiat Lux" (let there be light) which takes place in the 32nd century, and which to me seems to have influenced, or at least prefaced, David Robbins' Endworld series of post-apocalyptic novels.

One of the more halting moments is when A Brother Reader (character) reads from the ancient text describing the apocalyptic event, the Flame Deluge, and finally gives us an explanation for how Miller's world changed:

"And the prince smote the cities of his enemies with the new fire, and for three more days and nights did his great catapults and metal birds rain wrath upon them. Over each city a sun appeared and was brighter than the sun of heaven, and immediately that city withered and melted as wax under the torch, and the people thereof did stop in the streets and their skins smoked and they became as fagots thrown on the coals. And when the fury of the sun had faded, the city was in flames; and a great thunder came out of the sky, like the great battering-ram PIK-A-DON, to crush it utterly. Poisonous fumes fell over the land, and the land was aglow by night with the afterfire and the curse of the afterfire which caused a scurf on the skin and made the hair to fall and the blood to die in the veins.
"And a great stink went up from the Earth, even unto Heaven. Like unto Sodom and Gomorrah was the Earth and the ruins thereof, even in the land of that certain prince, for his enemies did not withhold their vengeance, sending fire in turn to engulf his cities as their own. The stink of the carnage was exceedingly offensive to the Lord, Who spoke unto the prince Name, saying: 'WHAT BURNT OFFERING IS THIS THAT YOU HAVE PREPARED BEFORE ME? WHAT IS THIS SAVOR THAT ARISES FROM THE PLACE OF HOLOCAUST? HAVE YOU MADE ME A HOLOCAUST OF SHEEP OR GOATS, OR OFFERED A CALF UNTO GOD?'
"But the prince answered him not, and God said: 'YOU HAVE MADE ME A HOLOCAUST OF MY SONS.'"

But later, as Thon Taddeo, a secular scholar who is a guest of the Albertian Order of St. Leibowitz to study the Blessed Memorabilia, in a charged speech before the monks, prophesied: "A century from now, men will fly through the air in mechanical birds. Metal carriages will race along roads of man-made stone.There will be buildings of thirty stories, ships that go under the sea, machines to perform all works."

And as he implored the monks to share their knowledge he said: "Ignorance is king. Many would not profit by his abdication. Many enrich themselves by means of his dark monarchy." The Thon recognized, unlike the monks, that the sole purpose of preserving those works of knowledge was not to give them a reason to continue preserving them, that the knowledge needed to see the light of day to be beneficial to the world. Their value lay in being shared, not preserved.

The final part of the novel is entitled ""Fiat Voluntas Tua" (Let Thy Will Be Done) and it begins "There were spaceships again in that century..." The century in question is the 38th. Man has dragged himself out of the dark and dusty interim between apocalypse and technological rebirth. In the first two parts I was moderately enthused, liking the story because of its depiction of a post-apocalyptic landscape and the portrayal of those who would live in that time. But the final part of the book is quite a surprising change of scenery, though somewhat foreshadowed by Thon Taddeo's predictions in the previous part.

Again, Miller interjects some humor, describing the spacemen of the future (from the viewpoint of intelligent entities from Arcturus) as "fuzzy impossibilities" who are "impassioned after-dinner speechmakers." Could Douglas Adams have been inspired by language such as: "...they felt (and not for the first time) that such a race go forth to conquer the stars. To conquer them several times, if need be, and certainly to make speeches about the conquest."

I found myself amazed that Miller takes us from a wasted world, destroyed by nuclear holocaust, and then drops us back into the future timestream just as humanity is poised on the cusp of destroying itself again, in the same manner, having learned nothing from history, as humanity is chronically prone to do.

As the book closes out, the Albertian Order of St. Leibowitz is striking out to colonize the stars and to preserve the Memorabilia beyond the confines of earth, to take it out of reach of the hands that would destroy everything under the sun. And the lesson to be taken from Canticle is that God does not privilege mankind with the ability to commit omnicide. While I am not a catholic, my faith gives me a similar perspective regarding Scripture, that mankind may be able to utterly destroy civilization, but through Providence a remnant will survive and preserve Inspiration.

God alone reserves the ability to end the time of man in the universe.

I had read that some people consider Canticle as one of the best works in the genre, and I was skeptical as I began reading. After finishing the book I had to release my skepticism. And while I wouldn't claim it as my own favorite in the genre, I would have to say that it is probably in my top five. That ranking might be a good topic for a future post.

A Canticle for Leibowitz was written by Walter M. Miller, Jr. And first published completely in 1959. Its origins are in short stories published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. It received the Hugo Award for best novel in 1960. You can find it in a fine used bookstore near you. I do believe it's still in print if you feel determined to buy it new.

Priorities: Snow Days

[Most of this was written a few weeks ago, but since the weather has been deteriorating all day I felt it was a good day to throw this one out]

Today should be a snow day. It's not. I'm sitting at work writing this.

For fear of sounding like a whiner, I'm going to attack this issue. I assure you, I'm not whining, I am righteously outraged.

5:45am: "All County offices, and the Courts, are open." Grrr...

We only got 11 inches of snow in town. But it came down in less than 12 hours and its still coming down. Some parts of the county got 3 feet.

I would venture to say, with some authority, that the vast majority of people do not enjoy, look forward too, or appreciate having to drive in bad weather on snowy and icy roads. I know this because the vast majority of people I have ever known have complained about having to drive in bad weather on snowy and icy roads. Very few claim to enjoy it.

The truth of the matter is that I actually like getting out in bad weather. The worse the weather, the more I enjoy it. But I do not like to be compelled to put myself at risk. I like to be in control of when I go and where I go. Being expected to show up at work at a certain time puts too many constraints on my comfort levels.

And even considering myself "comfortable" driving in bad weather, there is still a heightened stress level. You can never control the other driver and therefore you are always subject to the poor judgement of someone else.

So when the powers that be, those that get to make the decisions affecting a large number of people, decide to force everyone else to come in to work when they truly should stay off the roads what message are they sending?

In the private sector the message is clear: profits before people. The need of the business to make a few more dollars outweighs and personal risk of any of the individual employees, even those making the decisions to call off work for the day or not.

But what of the public sector, where profit is no factor? Well, that is the interesting part. The public sector seems to be pressured by the private sector to follow its example. It is the effort of corporatists to mold everyone's thinking to see the world simply as "profits before people."

But other than the perception of reduced revenues, what are the real consequences to calling off a day of work for poor weather conditions? In most cases there are no real consequences.

In our modern society few people do real work which affects the day to day survival of the majority of other people. There are admittedly some crucial services which must be maintained, but most people are not employed in life-sustaining pursuits. If the rest of us were to just stay off the roads, then those that must be out and about would be able to do so in a much safer environment.

Wait, you are going to argue and say: but there ARE consequences! If I don't come in every time the roads are slick I will be penalized. My firm will lose money and it will reflect poorly on me.

Are those real consequences or abstract consequences? Here is the test:

Will your ABSENCE from the work place case bodily harm to any other human being either on the day of your absence or within a reasonable amount of time? If you answer "yes" then there are real consequences. If you answer "no" then there are only abstract consequences.

Profit is an abstraction. These days almost no one does work that directly provides water, food or shelter for their own household. We all work for pay, which we then exchange for goods and services provided by other people.

The question is not whether or not your job is a necessary component of the economy or society, but whether or not it has some acute bearing on the health, safety or welfare of people. If you man the power station then yes, you probably need to be at work in our current societal configuration. Most people are not prepared to lose their heat and/or electricity in the middle of winter. If you are a bank teller, then no one is going to die if you are late to work or stay home. And the power station worker can still do their job even if they can't do their banking on any given day.

And in the case of the power station worker, profits, while still a component, are not the primary concern. There is a greater good that is served by keeping the lights on.

Where is the greater good served by forcing the DMV clerk to come in? The coffee kiosk worker? The grocery store employee making minimum wage and traveling by public transportation?

I work in permit review. I can honestly say that any delay in issuing a fence permit due to inclement weather will cause no adverse effects. The fence permit will still be required once the snow goes away, and no one can build a fence in this weather anyway. There is no loss in revenue, no loss of time for the applicant and therefore no real consequences.

We should not tolerate unreasonable abstract consequences. Your employer should not be able to penalize you for being late on days where there is snow and/or ice on the roads. I have worked in places where that was the policy though, snow or not, if you were late it would count against you. I have also worked in places that penalized you for calling in, even if you were physically unable to make it to work.

Unfortunately, as lowly employees we do not have the right to question the authority of their employers. But the reality is that sometimes individuals make better judgment calls than the powers that be.

My wife's first teaching job was in a rural Eastern Kentucky county, an hour east from where we lived at the time over bad roads. In bad weather the roads were downright deadly. One particular morning we woke to find that every county in the eastern half of the state had called off school for the day due to snow except the county where she worked.

I implored her not to go. I told her they could not penalize her for begin unable to get out, but she insisted on going in against both our better judgments. That morning in that particular school district a school bus and two other teachers on their way in to school slid off the road and became stuck. My wife made it safely (barely) to school and back, but there was no good reason for her to have gone in. On top of the fact that it was highly dangerous, there were also very few students that made it that day.

So why did that one school district choose to have school on the worst day of the winter, when all the other schools in the region cancelled without a second thought? The person who normally made the call to cancel school was out of town. Otherwise school would have been cancelled.

And this belies our complete and total sellout to the notion that the show must go on no matter how dangerous, no matter how ridiculous, no matter how absurd. Because no one would make the call, everyone tried to get in to work against their better judgment and the lives of teachers and students were at risk. But no one would stand up against something that just didn't seem right.

We're so scared of losing our jobs we will put our health and property (typically our expensive cars) in jeopardy to appease the corporatist demons and appeasers.

Reality is somewhat different than we've been conditioned to believe. If I stay home on a wretchedly cold and miserable day I have hurt no one. The climate is not such where I live that I won't be back at work within a day, two at the most, and I would have plenty of time to catch up any work delayed.

My position typically sees busier times when the weather is more favorable, when there are far fewer natural reasons to miss. But the expectation never wanes. Always. Ever. Never miss. Never exercise the common sense you are blessed with, ignore those instincts and feed the demons.

Sci-Fi Review: The Forever War by Joe Haldeman

WARNING: Slight spoiler!

Published in the year of my birth, 1974, The Forever War by Joe Haldeman initially harkens back to Heinlein's late Fifties classic Starship Troopers. There are some distinct similarities between Troopers and the first half of Forever.

Both tales are told in the first person, from the point of view of soldiers serving humankind in an intergalactic war with alien beings. Both describe life aboard a military spacecraft and the nuts and bolts of traveling through space and soldiering in unconventional environments. Haldeman focuses some attention on the phenomenon of time dilation as experienced by people traveling through space at near the speed of light.

While I much more thoroughly enjoy Heinlein's depiction of the extra-terrestrial soldier, I do enjoy Haldeman's characters' return to Earth after being away (relatively speaking) and finding things vastly different than they had left them. In a way, the characters experience the future world of The Forever War much like the reader experiences it. It is different, strange and seems to be a vision realized by an earlier generation.

And the twist comes when our protagonist and his love interest get dragged back into the war, sent off at relativistic speed and face new realities that change almost daily.

The novel is well paced, with good bits of action interjected in the overall story. The climax battle scene is interesting enough without dragging the reader into a long description of useless technical data. In some ways Haldeman paints a more believeable picture of interstellar war than Heinlein does. Though in my mind both pale against Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game.

The ending is partly predictable, but even the narrator alludes to the possible outcome early on. The twist that Haldeman offers is a nice unexpected gift, and resolves the story nicely. While I still like Starship Troopers better, Haldeman's The Forever War is right up there and adds some substance to the sub-genre.

The Forever War by Joe Haldeman is another title on my Hugo and Nebula List. Also check out "Tricentennial" which is a short story by Haldeman.

Reportedly, Blade Runner director Ridley Scott, has the rights to the film version of Haldeman's classic. Hopefully he will make a film of the same caliber as Blade Runner without giving in to the allure of flashy CGI over good storytelling.


Supposed concept art for film by Steve Simmons

Hugo and Nebula List (To Read)

So as I've explained in more detail in my previous post, I have compiled a list of Hugo and Nebula Award winners to read as a motivational tool, and to involuntarily introduce myself to new science fiction literature.

If you just copy and past all of the nominees and winners in all categories you come up with a word doc that is literally 50 plus pages. So I whittled the list down. The first hack took out all of the novellas, novelettes and short stories that I did not have some direct interest in, or had been recommended to read. For example, I kept in Enemy Mine by Barry B. Longyear because I enjoyed the movie starring Dennis Quaid and Louis Gossett, Jr. I kept in "Bicycle Repairman" by Bruce Sterling because the title intrigues me. I kept in "Ridge Running" by Kim Stanley Robinson because I enjoy his work. And I kept in “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream” by Harlan Ellison because it is a title that pops up from time to time outside of my list and it seems as if I should read it.

For the novels, I started with the entire list of all nominees and winners from both lists and then title by title plugged them into Wikipedia for a synopsis. If the premise sounded dull or uninteresting I deleted it. If I could find nothing about a work but the title sounded interesting I kept it on the list. If I could find nothing and the title sounds lame I took it off.

What is left is my master list. This is the list I will refer to when I am looking for new things to read. It is still a pretty massive list. There are 233 titles, two of which are either sequels of part of a series that were not nominated or awarded either.

I've also found that when I come across a work by an author that has won a Hugo or Nebula, but the work itself has not been nominated or won, I am still apt to read the book. The best example of this is Nancy Kress' Probability Moon. It was never nominated, nor has it won either award, but I bought it because of the "author of..." blurb on the cover. I was pleasantly surprised as I read the book.

I cut a lot of fantasy out of the list, not be cause I don't like fantasy literature, but because I don't like it as much as I like sci-fi. And with fantasy I really have to be interested in the book before I pick it up. I was in my 30s before I finally read The Lord of the Rings. I resisted for a long time.

Another factor that influences my reading choices is this: as I've gotten older, and more knowledgeable, more experienced and more opinionated I find that books I would have enjoyed in my younger years do not interest me, or specifically turn me off because I disagree with the subject matter.

I'm more cognizant of humanistic slants, anti-religious themes and blatant contradictions of my personal beliefs. Sometimes I can overlook those things, but sometimes I can't. In fiction I have more success in just plodding through a book and enjoying the story, but in non-fiction I have a much lower BS threshold.

For the purpose of my master list I am organizing the works by author. I tend to group books this way as I read. If I find a book I like I tend to want to read more of that particular author, especially if there are more works by the author on the list.

Having said that, what follows is a list of books I am recommending to myself, in hopes that I will find some enjoyable stories. I've done all of this work so I might as well share it with the blogosphere.


The Hugo and Nebula Master List:


Brian Aldiss
Helliconia Spring
Helliconia Winter
 
Chester Anderson
The Butterfly Kid
 
Poul Anderson
We Have Fed Our Seas (alt: The Enemy Stars)
The High Crusade
Tau Zero
There Will Be Time
The People of the Wind
Fire Time
 
Piers Anthony
Chthon
Macroscope
 
Catherine Asaro
The Last Hawk
 
Isaac Asimov
Pebble in the Sky
The Caves of Steel
The Gods Themselves
The Robots of Dawn
 
A. A. Attanasio
Radix
 
Margaret Atwood
The Handmaid's Tale
 
Paolo Bacigalupi
The Wind Up Girl
 
John Barnes
Orbital Resonance
 
Christopher Barzak
The Love We Share Without Knowing
 
T. J. Bass
Half Past Human
The Godwhale
 
Greg Bear
Queen of Angels
Moving Mars
 
Gregory Benford
Timescape
Great Sky River (sequel to In the Ocean of Night and Across the Sea of Suns)
 
Alfred Bester
The Demolished Man
 
Michael Bishop
A Funeral for the Eyes of Fire
 
James Blish
A Case of Conscience

David Brin
Earth
Brightness Reef
 
John Brunner
The Whole Man (alt: The Telepathist)
The Squares of the City
Stand on Zanzibar
The Jagged Orbit
The Sheep Look Up
 
Tobias Buckell
Ragamuffin
 
Algis Budrys
Who?
Rogue Moon
Hard Landing
 
Emma Bull
Bone Dance

Octavia E. Butler
Parable of the Sower
Parable of the Talents
 
Arthur Byron
Autumn Angels
 
Orson Scott Card
Seventh Son
Red Prophet
Prentice Alvin
 
Jeffrey A. Carver
Eternity's End
 
C. J. Cherryh
The Faded Sun: Kesrith
Cuckoo’s Egg
Cyteen
 
Arthur C. Clarke
A Fall of Moondust
The Fountains of Paradise
 
Hal Clement
Mission of Gravity
Star Light (sequel to Mission of Gravity)
 
John Crowley
Little, Big
 
Samuel R. Delany
Babel-17
The Einstein Intersection
Nova
Dhalgren
Triton
 
Philip K. Dick
Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said
Dr. Bloodmoney
 
Gordon R. Dickson
Dorsai! (alt: The Genetic General)
 
Thomas M. Disch
On Wings of Song
The Genocides
334
 
Cory Doctorow
Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom
Little Brother
 
George Alec Effinger
“Schrödinger’s Kitten”
 
Harlan Ellison
“I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream”
“A Boy and His Dog”
 
Kelley Eskridge
Solitaire
 
Philip José Farmer
To Your Scattered Bodies Go
 
Neil Gaiman
The Graveyard Book
 
Daniel F. Galouye
Dark Universe
 
David Gerrold
When Harlie Was One
The Man Who Folded Himself
“The Martian Child”
 
William Gibson
Count Zero
Virtual Light
 
William Gibson & Michael Swanwick
"Dogfight"
 
Kathleen Ann Goonan
Crescent City Rhapsody
Light Music
 
Joe Haldeman
Mindbridge
Forever Peace
Camouflage
"Tricentennial"
The Accidental Time Machine
 
Harry Harrison
Deathworld
Sense of Obligation (alt: Planet of the Damned)
 
Robert A. Heinlein
Double Star
Have Spacesuit – Will Travel
Glory Road
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
Time Enough for Love
Friday
Job: A Comedy of Justice
 
Russell Hoban
Riddley Walker
 
John Kessel
Good News From Outer Space
 
Donald Kingsbury
Courtship Rite
 
Nancy Kress
Beggars in Spain
Beggars and Choosers (sequel to Beggars in Spain)
 
Geoffrey A. Landis
Mars Crossing
 
Ursula K. Le Guin
The Lathe of Heaven
The Dispossessed
Tehanu: The Last Book of Earthsea
The Other Wind
 
Fritz Leiber
Destiny Times Three
The Big Time
The Wanderer
 
Murray Leinster
The Pirates of Ersatz (alt: The Pirates of Zan)
 
Barry B. Longyear
Enemy Mine
 
R. A. MacAvoy
Tea with the Black Dragon
 
Katherine MacLean
The Missing Man
 
Ken MacLeod
The Sky Road
Cosmonaut Keep
The Cassini Division
 
George R. R. Martin
Dying of the Light
A Storm of Swords (3rd in series)
A Game of Thrones
A Clash of Kings
 
Jack McDevitt
Seeker
Chindi
Polaris
Odyssey
Cauldron
 
Vonda N. McIntyre
Dreamsnake
 
Suzy McKee Charnas
The Vampire Tapestry
 
Lois McMaster Bujold
Falling Free
 
Walter M. Miller, Jr.
A Canticle for Leibowitz
 
David Mitchell
Cloud Atlas: A Novel
 
Elizabeth Moon
Remnant Population
 
Larry Niven
Protector
The Integral Trees
 
Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle
The Mote in God’s Eye
Inferno
Lucifer’s Hammer
Footfall
 
David R. Palmer
Emergence
 
Edgar Pangborn
Davy
 
Alexei Panshin
Rite of Passage
 
Paul Park
Celestis
 
Mark Phillips (aka: Randall Garrett and
Laurence M. Janifer)
That Sweet Little Old Lady (alt: Brain Twister)
 
H. Beam Piper
Little Fuzzy
 
Frederik Pohl
Man Plus
Gateway
Jem
Beyond the Blue Event Horizon
 
Terry Pratchett
Going Postal
Making Money
 
Cherie Priest
Boneshaker
 
Christopher Priest
The Inverted World
 
Thomas Pynchon
Gravity's Rainbow
 
Tom Reamy
Blind Voices
 
Kim Stanley Robinson
“Ridge Running”
The Years of Rice and Salt
The Wild Shore
 
Joanna Russ
And Chaos Died
 
Eric Frank Russell
“Allamagoosa”
 
James H. Schmitz
The Witches of Karres
 
Bob Shaw
The Ragged Astronauts
 
Robert Sheckley
Time Killer (alt: Immortality, Inc.)
 
Lewis Shiner
Frontera
 
Robert Silverberg
Thorns
Up the Line
Tower of Glass
A Time of Changes
The Book of Skulls
Dying Inside
The Stochastic Man
Shadrach in the Furnace
Lord Valentine’s Castle
 
Clifford D. Simak
The Fisherman (alt: Time Is the Simplest Thing)
Here Gather the Stars (alt: Way Station)
The Goblin Reservation
A Choice of Gods
Project Pope
 
Cordwainer Smith
The Planet Buyer (alt: The Boy Who Bought Old Earth)

Edward E. Smith
Skylark DuQuesne
 
Norman Spinrad
Bug Jack Barron
 
Robert Stallman
The Orphan
 
Neal Stephenson
The Diamond Age
Cryptonomicon
 
Bruce Sterling
Islands in the Net
Holy Fire
“Bicycle Repairman”
Distraction
 
Bruce Sterling & Bill Gibson
The Difference Engine
 
Sean Stewart
Perfect Circle
 
Charles Stross
Singularity Sky
 
Theodore Sturgeon
More Than Human
Venus Plus X
 
Michael Swanwick
Stations of the Tide
 
Sheri S. Tepper
Grass

Walter Tevis
Mockingbird
 
Wilson Tucker
The Year of the Quiet Sun
 
George Turner
Drowning Towers
 
Harry Turtledove
How Few Remain
 
A. E. van Vogt
The World of Null-A
 
Jack Vance
The Dying Earth
 
Jeff VanderMeer
Finch
 
John Varley
Titan
Wizard
"Retrograde Summer"
 
Gore Vidal
Kalki
 
Joan D. Vinge
The Snow Queen
The Summer Queen (sequel to Snow Queen)
 
Vernor Vinge
A Deepness in the Sky
Rainbows End
 
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
The Sirens of Titan
Cat’s Cradle
Slaughterhouse-Five
 
Jo Walton
Farthing
 
James White
The Escape Orbit
 
Kate Wilhelm
Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang
Juniper Time
 
Walter Jon Williams
Metropolitan (followed by City on Fire)
 
Connie Willis
To Say Nothing of the Dog
Passage
 
Robert Charles Wilson
Darwinia
 
Gene Wolfe
The Shadow of the Torturer (1st of four)
The Claw of the Conciliator (2nd of four)
The Sword of the Lictor (3rd of four)
The Citadel of the Autarch (4th of four, not a nominee or winner)
The Urth of the New Sun (5th of four)
Free Live Free
 
Roger Zelazny
…And Call Me Conrad (alt: This Immortal) (restored version, plus orig)
Lord of Light
Jack of Shadows
Doorways in the Sand

Hugo and Nebula List (Have Read)

I'm a big fan of sci-fi. I've been reading sci-fi books since I was a wee lad. A few years ago I was having trouble getting interested in new books. Nothing seemed to pique my interest. While contemplating re-reading my favorite book, Ender's Game, for the gazillionth time I again noticed the little blurbs on the cover: "HUGO WINNER" and "NEBULA WINNER."



Instead of going back with Ender to battle school I googled "Hugo Award Winners" and "Nebula Award Winners" and came up with quite a list of books. I noticed I had already read many of them. And then I hatched a plan. I would read ALL of the Hugo and Nebula winners. Okay, so since then I've weeded out quite a few, and I've added in some of the novellas, novelettes and short stories.

The Hugo Awards are given annually for the best science fiction or fantasy works and achievements of the previous year. To vote you must be a member of the World Science Fiction Convention.

The Nebula Award is given each year by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA), for the best science fiction/fantasy fiction published in the United States during the previous year.

What follows is the list of books I've read on both lists. The list starts with Hugos, if a title has an asterisk it is also on the Nebula list, but I didn't relist it with the Nebula winners. Many on the list were not winners, but only nominees, but I've included them as being worthy too. Those in bold are my favorites.

HUGOS

Animal Farm by George Orwell

Farmer in the Sky by Robert A. Heinlein

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

Childhood’s End by Arthur C. Clarke

Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein

Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein

*Dune by Frank Herbert

*Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes

*The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin

*Ringworld by Larry Niven

Dragonquest by Anne McCaffrey

*Rendezvous With Rama by Arthur C. Clarke

*The Forever War by Joe Haldeman

Children of Dune by Frank Herbert

*“The Bicentennial Man” by Isaac Asimov

“Ender’s Game” by Orson Scott Card (short story)

The White Dragon by Anne McCaffrey

*“Mikal’s Songbird” by Orson Scott Card

“Unaccompanied Sonata” by Orson Scott Card

The Ringworld Engineers by Larry Niven

Downbelow Station by C. J. Cherryh

The Pride of Chanur by C. J. Cherryh

*Startide Rising by David Brin

*Neuromancer by William Gibson

*Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card (the BEST)

*The Postman by David Brin (I read this one in a day)

“Green Mars” by Kim Stanley Robinson

“The Fringe” by Orson Scott Card

*Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card

*“Hatrack River” by Orson Scott Card

*“Robot Dreams” by Isaac Asimov

*The Uplift War by David Brin

*When Gravity Fails by George Alec Effinger

“Eye for Eye” by Orson Scott Card

*Mona Lisa Overdrive by William Gibson

“Dogwalker” by Orson Scott Card

Xenocide by Orson Scott Card

*A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge

*Red Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson

*Green Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson

Blue Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson

*Darwin’s Radio by Greg Bear

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J. K. Rowling

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J. K. Rowling

*American Gods by Neil Gaiman

*Perdido Street Station by China Miéville

Spin by Robert Charles Wilson

*The Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon

NEBULA

The Star Fox by Poul Anderson

"Driftglass" by Samuel R. Delany

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick

"Unaccompanied Sonata" by Orson Scott Card

"The Way Station" by Stephen King

"Johnny Mnemonic" by William Gibson

"Burning Chrome" by William Gibson

Schmatrix by Bruce Sterling

"The Fringe" by Orson Scott Card

"Lost Boys" by Orson Scott Card

I AM the 99%

I did not create this country. I have inherited it from my parents, who inherited it from their parents, who inherited it from their parents who inherited it from their parents who stole it from the natives. In my bloodline also flows native blood, though much diluted and long forgotten by the rest of the world. While I did not create the world I've come to inhabit, I will affect change when I can to make it a better place. While I cannot undo the injustices of the past, I can do my best to make up for them by creating positive externalities.

Back when I was racking up student loan debt pursuing a college degree I heard all about externalities in my Eco 120 class. There are positive and negative externalities. Negative externalities are things like pollution, fraud and robbery, while positive externalities are things that tend to build community and harmony with our fellow man.

While I see those in power creating a host of negative externalities I find myself increasingly apt to create positive externalities as I mature and as I grow as a citizen and good neighbor.

If I have time, energy and material resources I can give much back to my community, to those in need and I can feel good about it. But our current economic climate demands more of my resources, time and energy and leaves me with little left over, and hardly enough for my own needs.

I labored through college for seven years to obtain a piece of paper. That piece of paper cost me years of my life and somewhere between $30,000 and $40,000 of debt. I'd love to return it at this point for a full refund. It did absolutely nothing for me. My time there was filled with attempts to indoctrinate me to leftist propaganda and useless banter about meaningless topics.

I needed the paper to get a job. But once I had the job I discovered that absolutely nothing I learned in those hallowed halls of knowledge translated to my chosen profession. Everything I learned about my job I learned...on the job. I didn't need the piece of paper, other than to show that I was part of the club of dupes that fell for the swindle.

I've gotten a much better education through my own efforts at the local library since I graduated than I ever could have in an institution.

So for a nifty pricetag of approximately $35k I wasted seven years of my life and all I have to show for it is this lousy college hoodie that I had to pay $50 for in the campus bookstore.

After I was a couple of years into my undergraduate sentence tuition went up. 23%. I had already invested too much time and money to quit in protest. My choices were that or continue in pursuit of the piece of paper. I chose...poorly. But I chose in the way I was expected to choose. And the next year tuition went up again. Double digits.

I was scammed. In all fairness, I chose to go to college. I mean, this is a free country. I could have chosen not to go to college and throw my money away. Right? Nobody made me rack up all that debt. Right?

Sure, and then my only career prospects involved greasy food stains and garbled drive-thru speakers. You can't raise a family on minimum wage, and you can't feel like a human being flipping burgers as a CAREER. In my hometown you can't even afford a cheap apartment on minimum wage. Wage slaves are dependent on the mercy of others for shelter and long term financial support.

I did make the choice not to go to college at first. In 1993, after a year of college, after seeing only a small amount of debt racking up I decided I'd be better off to drop out, save my money and just go to work. I didn't want to be rich after all. I just wanted to make enough money to satisfy my modest needs.

That didn't work out so well. A series of factory jobs schooled me in the fine art of wage slavery. My rights as a human being were taken away in exchange for the meagerest of paychecks. Now, when I was young I believed in hard work. I wanted to exhibit a fine work ethic, but after a few jobs of beating my head against a wall trying to increase my purchasing power that resolve was slowly worn away. No amount of hard work would change the fact that the American working class is at the mercy of their corporate masters. Those corporate masters do not value hard work and loyalty, only profit.

First I was fed up with the expense of education so escaped into the workforce, then I was fed up with the costs associated with the lack of education and escaped back into university. Both were bad choices.

About the time we were moving west my parents were losing everything. They (we) lost the outdoor recreation business we tried to build up as a family, but that faltered in the summer after 9/11 and declined each season after that. They were losing their house because they had an overwhelming amount of monthly debt. My mother sold cookware and my father had previously lost his job with the Federal Government (about ten years prior) and was unable to find a decent paying job that he was qualified for.

We couldn't sell the house we had bought from them a few years prior so we let them move in when they had to leave what they thought would be the last house they would ever live in. They went to debt counseling and started the long slog back to normality.

We tried to sell the house, in which we had $26,000 of equity in 2006 when we refinanced, but we were unable after the collapse of '08. I doubt we have any equity now. And I believe the equity we had then was just a mirage.

They've struggled for almost four years just to come up with the $400 we asked them for to cover the mortgage payment. Two years ago my mother fell down the basement steps. They had no health insurance at the time. I don't want to think about what would have happened to them if I had not been able to cover when they couldn't.

Our mortgage there has been held by at least four different lenders in seven years. The current lender, CitiMortgage, tried to force us to get floodplain insurance last year. The house is absolutely not in a floodplain. They told me I was going to have to hire a surveyor. Fortunately we had already had the property surveyed and I finally convinced them we didn't need the floodplain insurance. But by then they had already started paying for the insurance to "protect their investment." And they charged us for it. If my parents hadn't needed a place, if I hadn't been doing my best to care for them through these hard times I would have told Citi: "The keys are under the mat. Enjoy your waterfront property." But I didn't have that luxury.

I have two mortgages in my name totaling $210,000 in liabilities. We have one car we own outright. I have no retirement. I have at least $30,000 in student loan debt and my wife has slightly less. In ten years our oldest son will be ready to go off to college. My parents will be 67 and 65 and they have little to no retirement built up. In ten years I need to come up with a strategy to pay for two kids to go to college, my own retirement and come up with plan for taking care of my aging parents. I have one sister in a similar situation. Even between the two of us I'm not sure if we can do what must be done. It is a frightening and overwhelming prospect.

The saving grace is that my in-laws are in much better financial shape than my own parents, so at least the burden isn't doubled automatically. At least for now. Life happens.

These things have weighed on my mind for a few years now. I still don't have an answer or a strategy. So when my boss says "don't expect a raise before 2014" I get angry. I start looking for other jobs. Of course there are none. I can move neither upward or laterally to improve my situation. We've cut everything out of our lives we can without giving up simple comforts. We don't have basic cable. We don't go on vacations.

If I hadn't finished college and gotten the cubicle trap job I have now I would not have had the means to help my parents in their time of direst need. If I hadn't finished college against my better judgment at the time I wouldn't even have the hope of improving my situation to the point where I could save for my children's future.

I used to think my "failures" were due to poor choices on my part. I've come to realize that not only is the playing field unlevel, the rules are unclear and change frequently. Every time we make a hard decision based on what is best for our family, creating a small buffer to increase our ability to provide the things we need then something on the other end changes and we go back to having just enough to make it from paycheck to paycheck. While I tried to make the best decisions the game was rigged against me. And the rest of the 99%.

Here are MY demands:

1) I want the opportunity to earn a fair wage. I'm not lazy. I'm perfectly willing to work hard for my money. I want the opportunity to choose my profession and I want the chance to see the fruits of my labor.
2) I do not want to sink the majority of my earnings into health care, insurance, taxes or unfair fees or hidden costs associated with the use of my own money.
3) I AM the market and I'm tired of being told what I want and what I need. I will not accept goods that are second rate, unsustainable and detrimental to the public good any longer.
4) Take the profit out of health care. My health is not for sale. Privatization only benefits those who seek profit. Healthy people are not profitable to the health care industry or the drug companies.
5) Stop degrading my food with unsustainable agricultural practices. I should not have to fear that the food I eat is slowly killing me and my family.
6) Do not take away my freedom to choose what is best for me and my family. I am a law abiding citizen, with no desire to defraud or harm my neighbors or the government.
7) STOP predatory lending forever. Don't give credit to those who are not qualified for it.

Do not weep for me. Do not assume I'm looking for sympathy. I am an intelligent and strong person. I have a wonderful family and I will do whatever I must to care for them. The past couple of years I've come to realize that I need to better prepare myself to transition to a different kind of life. I need to be more resilient. I need to stop assuming the system is designed to HELP me.

Trust in that system is gone. It will never be restored. And if a new system is put in its place I will be there to help craft it, to help mold it into something that will benefit my children and their children so this never happens again. But I will caution them not to trust too deeply in any new system either. Trust in God. Trust in your own abilities. Do not trust in the institutions of man. They're too easily corrupted. Watch them closely. Tear them down when they cease to benefit all.

Occupy Wall Street. We ARE the 99%

Transiton and Occupation

Cross posted at From the Pavement's Edge

I'm starting to see the not-so-diaphanous threads between the Transition Movement and this recent Occupy Together movement. The Occupy movement is a rising up of the people against those robber barons who've been sucking us dry for the past few decades. The Transition Movement is about voluntary simplicity across a network, its about becoming more reliant on your own skills within a community and its about community building.

What can be said against stronger communities in which to live? Strength does not come from unchecked growth. Strength comes from exercising the members you have to reach their maximum efficiency. Those who want to see their empires of wealth grow exponentially have sold us the lie that exponential growth is not only possible, but preferable.It is only a possibility for a few, not for the whole.

This movement is not socialism. This is not communism. This is capitalism at its best and a more healthy form of capitalism than what has been sold to us over the past 40 years.

In the past in have spoken about my "forced choice" to go carfree. However, its more accurate to say I choice between the lesser of "forced" choices. In going after my own so-called American Dream I followed the approved socioeconomic conventions. I graduated college. I got a job. I got a mortgage. I have student loan debt. I have no savings for my childrens' future. I have no retirement.

In seeking my path I made concessions I would rather not have made. I had to allow myself to be shackled to huge student loan debt. I moved 1200 miles from my hometown and my extended family to work. And I bought a modest house that I could barely afford, much further from my place of employ and the town where I work than I wanted to. Ten years ago my preferred choice would have been to find a good paying job in my hometown where I could raise my kids in relative safety and comfort while enriching my own life as I had opportunity.

Ten years ago I would have sworn a blood oath that I'd never work in an office. And today I sit in a cubicle writing this rant on an office computer sipping Starbucks coffee. My 27 year old self would punch my 37 year old self in the face and demand an explanation. There are days I want to shuck off the button up shirt and walk out. I want to work outside under the sun, tilling the earth to be rewarded with a tangible product from my day's labor.

Before I graduated college I lived in a place with a low cost of living but no decent jobs. It's a quiet town with basically good values and a bounty of natural beauty and resources. There is potential there for a thriving recreational economy, but there is little willingness to expand and explore that option. There is potential there for a thriving organic food movement. But again, little willingness and little vision to make it happen.

There were a few clear options left to me: no education meant minimum wage and poverty. Education meant student loan debt but no job prospects. Education plus staying put meant bankruptcy.

And so we moved west, to a metropolitan area that cannot naturally sustain its population. Water is pumped over mountains to keep the masses from being thirsty. The cost of living is high. And there is a tradeoff, as many of the things we would like to have seen as a part of the community we moved from are found here in spades. We like the social environment, but the costs are high, both socially and individually.

I landed in the Denver area in the winter of 2008. And I've been trapped here ever since. My dream was to get an education, get some experience and then find the BEST spot for my family to thrive. While we could have done much worse, we stay here largely because we have no other choice at this time.

That brings me back to the Transition Movement and how it has threads to this fledgling Occupy movement. I discovered Transition in my readings. I began a few years ago with "Your Money or Your Life" and moved on to "Affluenza" and some others. I eventually discovered James Howard Kunstler, first through a seeming planning tome called "The Geography of Nowhere" but then moved on to "The Long Emergency" which opened my eyes to the reality of Peak Oil. Once you break into Peak Oil, Transition is just around the corner. I think the best Peak Oil/Transition book I read was Richard Heinberg's "The Party's Over."

For awhile I believed I was just following some conspiracy theory thread about Peak Oil and the push to transition the American Way of Life into something more sustainable. I believed in it, because it sounds like the right thing to be doing, but I was skeptical that the movement had any credence. But I wanted it to be true. I have been so frustrated that my supposedly "good" choices in life have thwarted financial and social stability in my life.

And then I see people putting in "victory gardens" in their quarter acre suburban plots, I read about the wisdom of buying local organic food, when I hear people asking about backyard chickens in the suburbs or in the city...I see people exercising their freedom over their food. I see people who are concerned about the choices that have been taken away from them over the last few decades and wanting to make a change back to more sensible ways of doing things.

This whole movement, and group of movements, is all about people taking back their freedoms. People are sick and tired of being told that the market has dictated their choices when they know well and good that THEY ARE THE MARKET and they demand something else altogether. Profit has been dictating our choices for so long. Corporations do not heed the market's wishes. They only pursue the most profitable paths; even if that means lying, deceiving and coercing the average citizens of this country to buy things they do not need or want through devious methods. The deception is aimed at getting us to buy the objects that provide the corporations with the greatest profits possible.

People are taking back their freedom to choose healthy food over the poisoned and processed crap we've been handed. People are taking back their freedom to choose a more sustainable lifestyle, moving into cities and denser areas so they don't have to commute by car 100+ miles a day just to make ends meet. People are choosing not to shop at Walmart.

My wife and I find ourselves embracing this lifestyle because it makes sense. We're intelligent individuals and as a couple we can reason through just about anything. As we discuss the merits of growing our own food, raising chickens, rabbits and now the idea of a goat...as we discuss these things we pare away all of the fluff and we adapt the idea to our own situation and fit the pieces together in a way that makes sense for us.

We've never been apt to follow fads, and as we get deeper into the Transition Movement I am more and more certain that this is no hipster trend. While hipsters may participate, they are by no means the driving force behind the movement. It is people like us: parents, professionals, retirees, Boomers, twentysomethings, thirtysomethings...we're only a generation or two away from our forebears who lived through the Great Depression and a time of severe austerity, which was only punctuated by World War II.

Maybe our Depression era ancestors felt as if fate owed them something after WWII and they began paving the way toward our modern day cultural crisis. That's my theory anyway. The GI s returned home from defeating evil in the world and they were given this new thing called "suburbia" as their reward. No more toiling on the farm. No more struggling in poverty and scraping a living in the Dust Bowl. They were victorious over the trials of their generation and they settled into their Laz-E-Boys to savor TV dinners and forgot the horrors of the '30s and the War to End all Wars. I can't really begrudge them that.

There's no reason we can't rebuild those quaint communities we so love to see in movies, y'know, the ones that are all Victorian Homes along streets lined with huge oak or elm trees, where people can walk just down the block to the corner store for a newspaper and a gallon of fresh milk. We can have our backyard gardens. We can be healthy and live long lives because modern medicine has advanced so greatly in our lifetimes. We can throw off the shadows of cancer and heart disease. We can set aside a nest egg for our goals and dreams. Our kids can move to the other side of town instead of the other side of the country.

But the past two generations in this country have allowed Corporate interests to dictate our lives. Maybe we older generations don't really have a right to protest like the latest adult generation is. I think we should support them wholeheartedly. I don't think we have a right to pretend like we have no responsibility for the way things are today. I've been a legal adult for almost 20 years. I kept my head buried in the sand for a full ten of those years. I feel somewhat ashamed, even though I've been duped along with the rest of the country. I should have decided long ago to stop taking it with no protest.

I avoid thinking about the truly overwhelming aspects of my future. I'm not financial stable enough to take care of my parents as they age. And they have nothing in the bank to protect against aging and retiring. About the same time my parents will hit their 70s my children will be graduating high school and looking to my wife and I to help them get on their feet and get started with their lives outside our home. Today we live paycheck to paycheck. I only have ten or so years to prepare to take care of both my children and my parents.

I need opportunities NOW to increase my pay and move up the career ladder if I'm going to play along with the script I've been handed. And since it doesn't look like that's going to happen for (literally) years, as my boss continually reminds us, I have to start thinking hard about how I'm going to survive financially into my own elder years. I'm going to need my health, my energy and the knowledge and experience to carry me (us) through some hard times.

On Saturday I stood at the foot of the Colorado State Capitol steps and watched as a crowd of a few hundred multi-generational protestors demanded a change in the way things are. I applauded their sentiments. I almost wanted to add my own to the voices already raised in protest, but I held back. I'm not good in front of crowds. In my cowardice I silently began composing blog posts. But Dear Readers I do what I can.

My cycling is a part of my desire to be free from corporate plutocracy. My cycling is an exercise of my freedom to choose the path that's best for me and my family in this country. My bike has given me freedom to continue fighting for my own version of the American Dream. It has staved off individual financial hardship and collapse. My bike is the vehicle that will help me and my family Transition to a better place.

It shows us possibilities. It provides a greater margin of income for us. It inspires us to more resilient and sustainable practices for our home and the benefit of our future, as a family and as a part of our community. The bike plays a part in this for me and I know it must also play a part for many others.

If you're tired of the status quo, look to those who have been running the show for so long. Demand a change. Remember the lies we've been told. You know the truth. You can see it, feel it and hear it every day, hidden behind the advertising, behind the multitude of distractions that have been crafted to pacify us into submission.

It sounds like conspiracy theory, but you know in your heart that what I am saying is true. So they pump us full of chemicals without concern for our health? What can we do about it? So they lobby our leaders to pass laws that favor the rich over the average working class citizens? What can we do? So the economy is in the tank and no one has the answers to fix it? What can we do?

This.

www.occupytogether.org

And this.

transitionus.org