Mondays call for a harsh dose of potential reality

Posted on | September 24, 2007 | 5 Comments

Reading Jim Kunstler’s Clusterfuck Nation might never be a great way to start the work week, but I clicked on the feed in my google reader anyway.

A graph from this week’s installment of Jim’s wake-up call-bitch-slap for a nation of blind sheep (of which I am often one):

Reality is trying to tell us that we can’t run an economy based on nothing more than investment schemes without directing investment into activities that produce things of value. Reality is telling us to be very worried about living arrangements that can only function with copious imports of oil from people who are disgusted with us. Reality is telling us that we can’t divert our food crops into making motor fuels without people becoming unable to afford either fuel or food. Reality is telling us to redirect our culture more toward things-we-do-with-other-people and less toward things-we-do-with-new-things [emphasis mine]. Reality is telling us to shift from avoidance behavior and denial to engaging with reality in order to lead lives that are consistent with reality.

It’s got me thinking.

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Category: Education, Listening To

Comments

5 Responses to “Mondays call for a harsh dose of potential reality”

  1. marcyincny
    September 25th, 2007 @ 7:11 am

    After reading Jimmy’s essay yesterday I kept thinking about that next and final paragraph about ‘shock and awe’. My husband’s nephew was here for the weekend, up from Philly where he’s an engineer working on display screens, a 30-year old who grew up there in Hudson and went to Kent State, and I’d already been thinking about how unprepared Erik is for the changes that are likely to define his adult life when I read Kunstler’s comments. I can’t imagine what it will be like, should things change suddenly, for people who have never contemplated life without cheap oil. Or cheap everything else.

    And I know and love so many of them, SUV liberals most without the SUVs, happily flying all over the globe but buying lots of ‘offsets’, driving their hybrids but not even thinking about actually reducing the NUMBER OF MILES they log every month or, god forbid, TAKING A BUS!

    Sorry. They don’t read Jimmy Kunstler either so I don’t have much opportunity to rant a bit…

    [Reply]

  2. Cathy
    September 25th, 2007 @ 8:00 am

    Amen. The shift is coming…let’s make it good. Small is beautiful and so much easier.

    [Reply]

  3. schmutzie
    September 25th, 2007 @ 9:15 am

    Thank you for the link and the quote. Seriously good material.

    [Reply]

  4. Angelina
    September 26th, 2007 @ 1:49 pm

    I might have to check this guy’s writing out, but only when properly fortified. That is all stuff I’ve been thinking about a lot. Trying to work out how to make change for myself. Maybe in preparation for what might be coming. But mostly trying to make changes that just make sense.

    What a way to wake up.

    [Reply]

  5. her able hands | The view from the road to nowhere
    October 3rd, 2007 @ 5:35 am

    [...] to get dinner started. And this fact gives me a bit of a tummy ache. This makes me think about what Jim Kunstler said about redirecting our culture more toward things-we-do-with-other-people. How are we, the average [...]

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