Attend an urban gardening potluck, and avoid the cannibal holocaust

Whenever I start to get a little too optimistic about the future, and I want to regain my foothold in the word of dystopian pessimism, I like to check in with author Jim Kunsler. Jim, for those of you who don’t know him, is the author of such books as The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century. As some of you might recall, he also once called me an asshole, but we won’t hold that against him… So, anyway, whenever I find myself whistling Walking on Sunshine, and I need something a little stronger than a matinee of The Road to bring me back down to earth, I reach for my Kunstler. Well, today was one of those days, and Jim didn’t disappoint with his special New Year’s greeting… Here’s a clip:

2009 was the Year of the Zombie. The system for capital formation and allocation basically died but there was no funeral. A great national voodoo spell has kept the banks and related entities like Fannie Mae and the dead insurance giant AIG lurching around the graveyard with arms outstretched and yellowed eyes bugged out, howling for fresh infusions of blood… er, bailout cash, which is delivered in truckloads by the Federal Reserve, which is itself a zombie in the sense that it is probably insolvent. The government and the banks (including the Fed) have been playing very complicated games with each other, and the public, trying to pretend that they can all still function, shifting and shuffling losses, cooking their books, hiding losses, and doing everything possible to detach the relation of “money” to the reality of productive activity.

But nothing has been fixed, not even a little. Nothing has been enforced. No one has been held responsible for massive fraud. The underlying reality is that we are a much less affluent society than we pretend to be, or, to put it bluntly, that we are functionally bankrupt at every level: household, corporate enterprise, and government (all levels of that, too)…

…One wild card is how angry the American people might get. Unlike the 1930s, we are no longer a nation who call each other “Mister” and “Ma’am,” where even the down-and-out wear neckties and speak a discernible variant of regular English, where hoboes say “thank you,” and where, in short, there is something like a common culture of shared values. We’re a nation of thugs and louts with flames tattooed on our necks, who call each other “motherfucker” and are skilled only in playing video games based on mass murder. The masses of Roosevelt’s time were coming off decades of programmed, regimented work, where people showed up in well-run factories and schools and pretty much behaved themselves. In my view, that’s one of the reasons that the US didn’t explode in political violence during the Great Depression of the 1930s – the discipline and fortitude of the citizenry. The sheer weight of demoralization now is so titanic that it is very hard to imagine the people of the USA pulling together for anything beyond the most superficial ceremonies – placing teddy bears on a crash site. And forget about discipline and fortitude in a nation of ADD victims and self-esteem seekers…

I believe we will see the outbreak of civil disturbance at many levels in 2010. One will be plain old crime against property and persons, especially where the sense of community is flimsy-to-nonexistent, and that includes most of suburban America. The automobile is a fabulous aid to crime. People can commit crimes in Skokie and be back home in Racine before supper (if supper is anything besides a pepperoni stick and some Hostess Ho-Hos in the car). Fewer police will be on guard due to budget shortfalls.

I think we’ll see a variety-pack of political disturbance led first by people who are just plain pissed off at government and corporations and seek to damage property belonging to these entities. The ideologically-driven will offer up “revolutionary” action to redefine some lost national sense of purpose. Some of the most dangerous players such as the political racialists, the posse comitatus types, the totalitarian populists, have been out-of-sight for years. They’ll come out of the woodwork and join the contest over dwindling resources. Both the Left and the Right are capable of violence. But since the Left is ostensibly already in power, the Right is in a better position to mount a real challenge to office-holders. Their ideas may be savage and ridiculous, but they could easily sweep the 2010 elections – unless we see the rise of a third party (or perhaps several parties). No sign of that yet. Personally, I’d like to see figures like Christopher Dodd and Barney Frank sent packing, though I’m a registered Democrat. In the year ahead, the sense of contraction will be palpable and huge. Losses will be obvious. No amount of jive-talking will convince the public that they are experiencing “recovery.” Everything familiar and comforting will begin receding toward the horizon.

…The Long Emergency is officially underway. Reality is telling us very clearly to prepare for a new way of life in the USA. We’re in desperate need of decomplexifying, re-localizing, downscaling, and re-humanizing American life. It doesn’t mean that we will be a lesser people or that we will not recognize our own culture. In some respects, I think it means we must return to some traditional American life-ways that we abandoned for the cheap oil life of convenience, comfort, obesity, and social atomization.

The successful people in America moving forward will be those who attach themselves to cohesive local communities, places with integral local economies and sturdy social networks, especially places that can produce a significant amount of their own food….

Which reminds me… This Thursday, our friends at Growing Hope – the organization leading Ypsilanti’s local food production movement – will be hosting their first Community Potluck. So, if you’re interested in discussing sustainable communities, urban farming, and healthy food, drop by the Ypsi Senior Center (1015 N. Congress) at 6:00 PM on January 7, and bring a dish to pass. (The venue for these potlucks may change in the future (so check the Growing Hope website), but they will always be on the first Thursday of the month.)

Seriously, you should attend. And we Ypsilantians should strive to produce 4-times more produce next year than we did this year. Cannibal holocaust or not, it’s the right thing to do on a bunch of different levels.

Oh, I should also mention that the folks at Growing Hope will be giving monthly tours of their new Growing Hope Center on Michigan Avenue. Tours will be the first Wednesday of each month, which, this month will be January 6. Tours will run from 4:00 to 5:00 PM, and an RSVP is requested. (You can find contact information by following the Growing Hope link above.)