Crude Awakening

"It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine."

My wife doesn’t like it when I talk about the future. In fact we just had an argument, because I was brooding around the house, griping about the 700 Billion dollar bailout for the criminals on Wall Street, and contemplating our future in a post-apocalyptic landscape in which we find a plot of land where we can feed and take care of our family.

I am sure every generation feels that their future is in peril and that the world is coming to an end. But something about the where we stand on the brink of the 21st century, feels too real. My wife, rightfully although I don’t want to admit it that, if the future is a s grim as I predict then why have another baby as we are planning on doing. If the population of the planet is already staggeringly unsustainable, if the world could realistically only support about one billion people, then how or why would one even consider procreating. Isn’t it cruel to bring another life into a world that you are certain will be filled with doom and gloom and war?

I don’t have an answer. I have a hard time articulate my views to her in person, so I have decided to try my hand here in text. As much as I gripe about the human condition, I believe in humanity. Despite the near suicidal decisions we have made as a species, I still think that when the smoke clears, human beings will be able to regroup and restart. Being the eternal optimist, I guess I just hope that my family and I will be resourceful enough to make it through what ever the future has to offer.

Why am I arguing with my wife about trying to find a piece of land on a connected landmass away from major urban centers where we can raise our kids along side our own food? I have watched another film that has scared the shit of me.

As documentary films go, Crude Awakening: The Oil Clash is only as good as its title, and that is not very. Cinematically, artistically, and in terms of craft the movie is average at best and riddle with clichés that make some scenes laughable. But the message is there and worth considering. I feel that every high school student in the world should watch this filmed!

I am not sure if it is best to run blindly into the future hoping that things stay the same or get better, or if it is better to look to the future with fear, but I cannot simply look the other way. This movie is a only one item on a list of material that I have been ingesting lately that makes a pretty strong case that the world is changing and not for the better.

Despite of this, contrary to what my wife thinks about my attitude, I think that we have a stake in living. We may not be as “green” as we can be; my recent trip to Shanghai was the second or third major trip of four I will take this year. Who am I kidding? Air travel is one of the worst uses of fossil fuels out there. But we can continue to live our lives, not as normal, but as aware.

To run blindly into a future pretending everything will be okay is irresponsible, when there are so many signs saying that it will not be okay. I can only live my life the best I can. I feel sorry for my wife for having to put up with me, but I cannot imagine interact with the world in any other way. I cannot explain why I want to have another baby. I know that ecologically it is not a wise choice. It is easy to sit back and suggest that the Chinese only have one baby each, because they are over their quota, but it is another to limit yourself to the idea of forced family planning. I guess like all of the choices we make in a globalized, fossil fuel consuming, market economy, we feel powerless to act differently.

My wife often accuses me of standing on a morally superior soapbox, and this saddens me, because all of the judgment I may appear to be lashing out into the world is first and foremost directed at myself. I find myself trapped in a system that I did not build and cannot escape from. I know that ultimately I could easily choose to live off the grid and make major life changes, but that is easier said than done, and I applaud the people who have the courage to make those choices.

I am rambling now, so I will go back into our room and apologize to my wife for being so serious all the time, but these arguments are good to have sometimes, because when the future comes, and it will be a bit scary, perhaps we will be better prepared to deal with it.

Here is the trailer for Crude Awakening: The Oil Clash. Please watch the film in its entirety and if you are teacher show it to your kids! Spend some time on Youtube and check out the other clips.

Morning Yearning

I commanded myself to spring out of bed as soon as the alarm went off. No snoozing or contemplation of further sleep. Like a quick band-aid being torn off, I know myself well enough to know that I cannot afford any delays, or else risk derailing the entire morning routine project before it has even started.

(Warning approaching tangent!)

One of the main components of this transformation project is a cognizant, self-aware reconnection with nature and re-entry into an eco-system I can recognize. As I have previously stated, and will no doubt repeat like a mantra, living in the desert makes it difficult to feel like you are a part of nature, let alone a denizen of the planet Earth. The barren landscape coupled with the unnatural heat makes one feel as if he or she is a colonist on a distant planet much closer to the sun.

I have, however, been trying to find certain elements of everyday life to remind me that I am indeed an earthling and that nature, even in this stark setting, is still part of mother Nature’s script. I notice small birds bathing in the sand outside my window, shrubs and weeds along the side of the road, but ironically the two bodies that have connected me the most significantly with the earth here in Doha are the moon and the sun.

When I go to cross that river
She is a comfort by my side
When I try to understand
She just opens up her hands

There’s a big
A big hard sun
Beating in the people
In a big hard world

Eddie Vedder

I am sure everybody has a certain novel appreciation for the sun. A basic grasp of photosynthesis should be enough to convert any person into a sun worshiper, and if elementary level science is not enough, any one who has spent anytime outside on a hot sunny day can appreciate that the sun is not only the source of all life on earth, but a beautiful deity in her own right. Without her energy no life on earth would exist. I find it strange that millions of people devote their faith to a god no one has ever seen, but the most people take the very source of all life on our planet for granted.

My casual understanding of the sun was dramatically altered after reading The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight. (all quotes in this post are from this text.) Since finishing the book, I have come to better understand the true magic of our nearest star. Since this new discovery, I can now see that the sun is not merely a part of our eco-system here on earth, it is the root of every food chain on earth. It is the source of all energy. It is wrong to think that only solar energy comes from the sun.

At their most basic, fossil fuels are nothing more than ancient sunlight stored in decaying animal and plant life. Oil is an organic battery hoarding energy from the light that hit the face of the earth millions of years ago.

Almost all of Pangea was covered with a dense mat of vegetation, rising hundreds of feet into the air, creating a think ground of cover rotting and dead plant matter that became, in some places, hundreds or even thousands of feet deep. The mats of living and dead vegetation became thicker and thicker as this phase continued for over 70 million years.

This mat of rotted organic matter is the very oil that fuels are cars, electricity plants, tanks, war planes, processed foods, children’s toys, you name it- this ancient stored sunlight energizes our entire modern industrial society. The problem is that the earth was designed to operate using current sunlight energy only.

The planet’s human population grew beyond the level that the Earth could sustain if humans were using only local “current sunlight” as an energy and food source.

To put it simply, we are using energy that is not sustainable. The sun produces only so much energy, this amount of energy is enough to sustain a functioning population of Earth inhabitants, but humans have tapped into a hidden source of ancient sunlight, thus growing our population exponentially, and throwing the balance out of order. We now have a population dependent on more energy than the sun can produce, so when our credit runs out, the sun will not be able to produce enough energy to sustain the population we have created.

I didn’t mean to go on that rant, for more detailed explanation of these lessons please read the book. I just brought up the sun, because I wanted to illustrate why I have become so uber-aware of its role in my life. Nothing is more effective to show a person the power and worth of the sun, then feeling it on your skin in the Arabian desert. There is also something about the longitude and latitude of this region and the amount of sand in the air that makes for spectacular sunsets, and from what I realized today sunrises as well.

Today was the first day I woke up at 5:30. I made myself a cup of tea. (I really need to not buy tea in tea bags anymore. The waste of each bag seems ridiculous. Loose-leaf tea will eliminate so much unneeded waste.)

I hit the elliptical machine and felt my thighs ache from non-use. Onto push-ups/sit-ups and a short stint of Zazen. It was the easiest ten-minute session I have ever had. I could feel my heart beating, tiny globules of sweat danced on my skin; I mediated on a spec of dust in my field of vision. It stayed in place when I was done. Then I floated away to work and it too was gone upon my return.

Another day another chance to get it right
Must I still be learning?
Must I still be learning?

Morning yearning…