from an e-mail I just wrote:

To X:

While I don't entirely agree with what reads to be a slightly gun-nut bent to your perspective, I get most of what you're saying and agree with some of it. I think the strong days of our cultural hegemony and neo-colonial economy are pretty much on the downswing (read: crested on the hill and heading towards the valley floor with shoddy brakes). I think a lot of sacrifices will need to be made in the coming years just to keep people alive through harsh winters and dry summers. Gas nor energy in general will ever be "cheap" again, until solar power becomes much more efficient and low-cost or there's some breakthrough in fusion reactor technology... and that could be a few years down the line.

The banking system in this country (and throughout the "western world") is a house of cards and a numbers game with little that is concrete or tangible to tie value to. "Worth" is so far-removed these days from what actually keeps the world moving (No, it's not money. That's just a tool. It's energy and all the things we can turn it into - food, water, labor, mineral resources - in order to sustain life). What one man with a few million dollars to "invest" says "ownership in company X" is worth becomes it's new value and all of a sudden your $200,000 has become $275,000 and money is seemingly created out of nowhere. He hasn't lost his several million dollars to the already existing investors (it's increased in value as well). He's just made your "ownership in company X" seem more valuable in the opinions of other people with lots of money and a desire for more. More "money" or value has been created not from anything real, but from potential or future prospects. (I'm not saying all investments and stock exchanges are built to fail, but the way the big ones are set up currently their link to what is real, what is tangible and to realistic growth rates is esoteric at best.)

Bankers place a bet by giving you a house and hoping that you can pay them back for it, and then some, within a certain time-frame. Then institutional bankers place bets with massive amounts of money on whether or not bank X made a smart decision giving you and your neighbors those houses. Or bank Y places a bet on whether or not company Z will default on some loan and more money is created out of thoughts and estimations of value and little actual capital or material - just the hope that someone will pay it all back in the end. The value is simply "potential worth" at best -- betting on the future. That's exactly the number game that caused Enron to collapse. They could cook their books by claiming in their SEC filings as current-year or current-quarter assets what they thought they might make next year or next quarter. When it came time to pay-up, they couldn't grab cash from the future to pay "investors" today. It's kind of like when a Ponzi scheme goes belly-up.

This doesn't work as a sustainable model for a society inextricably linked to the Laws of Nature. Obviously we can't grow crops from the seeds we expect to have next year. We can't eat hamburgers from cows yet to be born. But this is exactly what we're trying to do. We've mortgaged our children's children and possibly our children's children's children (and on...) deeper than they could ever hope to pay, financially and materially. We are looking at the possibility of using up their potential energy resources for growth today before we develop new ones to sufficiently and smoothly replace them. We're using up land and water resources faster than they can be filtered, replaced or recycled in natural systems, meaning that the planet is unlikely to be able to support population at this growth-rate or at this size in who knows how many short decades. When a future generation comes to pick up its check so it can live a happy, healthy life, the funds won't be in the bank.

For the immediate future it looks like we're in for a bumpy ride. But perhaps it is a good thing, as maybe it means that more and more people are seeing the flaws in the system, directly or indirectly, and are trying to pull back on that brake lever. Maybe the reasons are less altruistic than that sounds; maybe it's more because people want to cut their losses now that they see the potential for a rock field at the bottom of this slope, but it's better this than full speed ahead blindly and smoothly until we hit the rocks full-force. And maybe this gives us a bit more time to think about ways to turn this potential mess into a wonderful opportunity for growth (painful growth, yes, but growth and betterment).

I think in a worst-case scenario we have some sort of financial melt-down and a desperate government, fearful of loosing control, hops in to try and fix the problem in an "emergency" state of mind, trying to enact too much control, madly, graspingly. Exercising enough control to keep greedy mad men from making the same mistakes that got us here in the first place is one thing. Trying to over regulate and place a strangle hold on every uncertain variable in society is what dystopian futures are made of.

Another bad scenario, which I'm more immediately afraid of is a ton of cash poured into the wrong spots, in the wrong way. Again, this isn't real stuff of tangible value. These funds come from an uncertain future potential value that we will have to keep paying back for some time to come. And these funds come from international entities (countries and multinational banks) that may not always feel so friendly or helpful to us. And if it's given to those same people and institutions with the same bad habits and the same conceptions that led to the misuse of the potential value they had before, we may windup digging the hole deeper in attempt to get ourself out.

In a best case scenario we have a controlled descent at the bottom and we, as individuals and communities, learn a bit more about self-reliance and the impact of our actions, directly and indirectly, on our environment and our potential futures. Most of us will have to learn it the hard way, because it's not something we've been raised to in the last century or so. We will have to go through the inconvenience of redesigning our cities and suburbs and restructuring our food-supply systems based on the increase in transportation costs. We may have to eat food that's more seasonal and regional and use less electricity. Flying will become a privilege for only the more prosperous people. Lots of vacant houses in the suburbs hopefully will be torn down and torn up to make new town centers, squares and reclaimed community farming land. Unless electric vehicles become cheap and plentiful soon, along with cheap solar or fusion energy, individual vehicles will become less common for a while. Old fossil-fuel vehicles will rust and be recycled as scrap. Believe me, there will be a lot of cheap scrap metal in the coming decades. Fortunately we'll have to become better at recycling old materials, because it'll finally start to be more cost effective. Maybe we'll even start mining our old landfills for precious resources.

A lot of this may sound very flowery and utopian, but it is what I HOPE will happen. It is how I prefer to see our potential future, rather than a lot of angry, defensive individuals held up in compounds spread through the wilderness. I'm sure we'll get a good few of those in the coming decades, but I think most people enjoy communities and concentrations of cultures. What a central government will look like or do in this scenario, I'm not sure. Maybe the best thing in this situation would be for the federal government to stay out of as much as they can and let regional and local governments develop new solutions that work for their individual, differing communities. Some places will fail and other places will know not to try what they did. Some places will flourish and other places will try variations on those methods, adapted for their climate, character, politics, etc. And as much as we've been stuck in some bad ruts with bad habits, I think we can change if the incentives and options are made clear enough.

So, sorry for the long rant. I just wanted to explore a thought for a while. Thanks for the inspiration and catalyst.

You rock,
- Art

My spare room is open again, so let's try this again...

Need a temporary to not-so-temporary home NOW or soonish? Would you
delight to live in lovely Southeast Portland, blocks from almost
everything you could need?

The Location:

Near 39th & Hawthorne, two blocks north of the Bagdad Theatre,
between Hawthorne & Belmont. Within four or five blocks in any
direction you have: Fred Meyers, PastaWorks, Powell's Bookstore,
Hollywood Video, a library, Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream shop, The Red
Light, Buffalo Exchange, several coffee shops (Sound Grounds, Pete's,
Fresh Pot, Starbucks, etc.), Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Bishops
Barbershop, Thai restaurants, an Indian restaurant, Italian
restaurants, pet supply stores, and lots of little shops.

The Room:

I have one bedroom available in a two-bedroom/one-bath duplex. The
room is just short of 12' long by 8'3" wide with a 7'7" ceiling and a
light fixture in the middle. There's a closet with sliding doors built
into one of the shorter walls. The window, opposite it, faces North.
Floors are carpeted.

The Household:

The household consists of myself and two cats. There's a diswasher, washing machine and dryer. The stove is electric as is heating. I have a land-line phone as well as wi-fi. There's a small patio in back. It's a non-smoking household. There is half a garage for storage.

Expenses:

$425 for rent + 1/2 utilities and phone/internet
(Winter electricity can get as high as $200+; Summer electricity is usually $50+)
(your monthly portion of phone/internet is approx. $45)

Move-in as soon as the 15th of February.

Two films by Tom Kuntz that teach us what is so special about this time of year... (NSFW)

www.warmandfuzzyfeeling.com/

www.santasm.net/

- Enjoy

I go from good to off-kilter fast.
Depression is back with a wallop. I feel frantic and off-kilter, pacing back-and-forth in my kitchen.
Less-than-hopeful news from the doctor.
Pessimistic news from the staffing agencies.
Upset from my dear C.
Money running out.
Feels like the ground dropping out from under me again.
Should I really be standing on my own?
Why can't I make income from my art?
So much faltering, poor decisions, self-doubting.
I really do feel like I should be on medication, but I don't even have the money...

Need a temporary to not-so-temporary home NOW or soonish? Would you delight to live in lovely Southeast Portland, blocks from almost everything you could need?

The Location:
Near 39th & Hawthorne, two blocks north of the Bagdad Theatre, between Hawthorne & Belmont. Within four or five blocks in any direction you have: Fred Meyers, PastaWorks, Powell's Bookstore, Hollywood Video, a library, Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream shop, The Red Light, Buffalo Exchange, several coffee shops (Sound Grounds, Pete's, Fresh Pot, Starbucks, etc.), Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Bishops Barbershop, Thai restaurants, an Indian restaurant, Italian restaurants, pet supply stores, and lots of little shops.

The Room:
I have one bedroom available in a two-bedroom/one-bath duplex. The room is just short of 12' long by 8'3" wide with a 7'7" ceiling and a light fixture in the middle. There's a closet with sliding doors built into one of the shorter walls. The window, opposite it, faces North. The...

Um... Nevermind. Job done. Consider the room taken.