The First Diner Convocation

In 2007 I read James Howard Kunstler's The Long Emergency, and my life changed irrevocably due to the information I received from that book. Shortly after, I joined the Kunstlercast forum and posted many threads and had many in depth conversations about collapse, peak oil, and the ramifications of our infinite growth on a finite planet paradigm. I also began digesting collapse related books with precision and efficiency, and I would often order five or six books at a time by authors like Richard Heinberg, Dmitry Orlov, John Michael Greer, Michael Ruppert, and Jared Diamond just to name a few. Figuring out what the collapse of our modern petroleum dependent civilization meant to me was no easy task. I'm an Aspie, so it wasn't an emotional affair for me to deal with, but it was stressful nonetheless, and collapse became a "special interest," and it's a special interest that is still current for me. Mostly because I'm unable to not abide in the truth of things. It seems this to is part of my Aspie brain (I'll be writing about Asperger's Syndrome much more in the coming months because I have just recently stopped being in denial about the diagnosis...but this particular blog is not the time to do that).

I was a daily contributor over at the Kunstlercast, and it was the first forum I'd ever been a member of. I greatly enjoyed communicating with like minds on that forum via the written medium. I fell in love with it actually, and the regular contributors became my friends (which was great since IRL friends are difficult for me to acquire). This was a set of people whom would talk about the truths surrounding PO with me for hours on end, which is still next to impossible to do with people IRL. Threads that would stretch for days and days. I was a conspiracy theorist at this time in my life and had been for about five years. The "Kcats," as we called ourselves, helped open my eyes a bit about the nature of conspiracy theories and their many half truths. Around 2009 or so I got tired of the same old shit being discussed over and over again via countless incarnations on the Kunstlercast forum. It got boring and I decided to leave the forum without a word about it really. I just sorta left one day and never went back. I also deleted my facebook account around this same time and focused all of my writing on this blog.

The only blog I was reading at this time was John Michael Greer's Archdruid Report. He came up with the concept of the Green Wizard, and a forum was devoted to the project, which I frequented for a while. I had shifted my focus from understanding the nature of our predicament to wanting to act on the information. What became important to me was the answer to the question "what am I going to do about collapse?" The Green Wizard Project (GWP) was exactly what I needed. The GWP was mostly designed for solitary green wizards, and it was about using appropriate tech and about developing strategies that would help with minimizing the impact that the Long Descent would have on the GWP participants. The psychological component of the GWP can be summed up by JMG's own acronym "LESS." Less entertainment, stuff, and stimulation. JMG advises us all to step back into voluntary simplicity and learn how to live more in tune with the natural world and it's cycles and it's renewable pace. I became a Druid as well. For the next couple of years practicing green wizardry was sufficient for me as a response to collapse, but that to began to change as my understanding of our predicament began intensifying.

I realized that the only chance of survival in a shit hits the fan scenario, or even just a long descent scenario, would be real community. As far as I can tell, real community has gone extinct in our imagadget, narcissistic, techno delusional, American Hologram deployed and Matrix controlled consumer waste generating stank of a society. I had found fellow blogger William Hunter Duncan's blog, Off The Grid in Minneapolis, via a comment he left over at the Archdruid Report. William resonated very strongly with me (which interestingly enough, William now works with autistic people as his job). I began following his blog, and he began following mine. He may well have been the first "follower" of mine on this blog. We became good virtual friends and even exchanged books we were writing for back and forth criticism and suggestions. He told me about a new forum that he was an administrator for called the Doomstead Diner. I went and had a look, but I still had a sour taste in my mouth after boring with the Kunstlercast forum. I looked around and it appeared to be just about the exact same thing as the Kcast forum with different avatars. After a short visit I decided that I wasn't interested in joining as a member (and I just found out, via going to the kunstlercast forum to copy the web address for the hyperlink for this blog that I've been banned from the Kunstlercast Forum for some unknown reason).  

Several months later I left a comment on Morris Berman's blog and RE, the man responsible for the existence of the Doomstead Diner, saw it and it peaked his interest enough to come over here to see what I was about. William had commented on that blog and RE saw this and apparently formed the opinion that I may be a good match as a cross poster on the Diner. It felt good to have somebody seek me out for my writing, and I was more than happy to have my essays published on the Diner. I figured since I was going to be publishing my blog on the Diner that I might as well have a more focused look around to see what was shakin' in the Diner world. I've been an active participant and a Diner ever since. Not long after I arrived at the Diner fellow Diner Roamer arrived and posted a thread titled "Community OwnedDoomstead." That thread lit a spark that found good tinder and began smoking. Roamer knew about 150 acres in NC that an elderly couple owned and were interested in allowing more able bodied individuals to cultivate the land in permaculture fashion. My wife Gypsy Mama and son Ayden Zen and I all drove to NC to meet Roamer in person along with his on again off again lady friend. We met in a coffee shop across the street from the university my wife graduated from, and we all instantly liked each other. It was the first time I had ever met a virtual friend in real life...making Roamer an "in real life" friend as well. This was a very exciting and important step for the Diner. As it turns out, Roamer, GM and I's meeting was foreshadowing the now not too distant future. The 150 acres didn't work out on account of dementia and Cat Food Carol, but that's a long story (and you likely already know it if you're reading this blog). We came a pubic hair away from the first Sunstead (at the time it had been dubbed the Foxstead) within weeks of the first attempt that the Diner's made for a community owned doomstead.

We've since been working towards figuring out how to bioneer our way into a petroleum scarce world. We've been trying to figure out how we move forward from this point. How do we structure a new way to inhabit the land and use it's resources to meet our basic human needs in a sustainable and healing way? We don't want a commune, but we want something intentional that empowers the Sunsteaders, and gives us autonomy and meaningful community at the same time. Eventually the new effort was dubbed the SUN project (sustaining universal needs). Our driving ethic is to "save as many as you can." This translating into a tribal unit we are currently calling the "Sunstead." We want the Sunstead to be a self replicating template that will pop up like mushrooms in spite of the Near Term Human Extinction (NTHE) meme. NTHE being the idea that all life on Earth will be going extinct sometime in the next two decades (as soon as five years from now) due to run away positive feedback loops running amok in the climate control mechanisms of our planet. They may be right, but I refuse to live in a world with no hope, and I recognize that there is no way anybody can know what the planet will do. While our civilization is definitely collapsing, and while we are doing our level best to shit all over the planet that sustains us with our incessant chemical creation and consumptive waste generation, our planet is a living organism which we cannot study under a microscope.  We can't possibly know how the Earth will react.

The Sun Foundation is now a 501c3 non-profit organization, and we are currently waiting for the magic government letter to arrive so that we can begin accepting charitable donations from people like you, whom care about the reality outside of the Matrix, and our engagement with the wasteland we've inherited. In a little under two weeks a select few Diner members are going to converge on the Toothstead in Texas for the purposes of the first Diner Convocation, and for training in Monolithic Dome construction. 

The coming Convocation is proof that we're not just a bunch of keyboards circle jerking into the endless night about how fucked it all is. We want to do something in the real world about the predicament our civilization's in. The writing is on the wall, and food prices are fit to bust any time now due to drought and ever increasing super storms. I could go on about all of the problems our crumbling civilization is dealing with, but I've done that countless times here already. If you don't know what the problems are at this point than it's because you are willfully deluding yourself, or just don't have the desire to extricate yourself from the Matrix's mesmerizing hologram. We're going to meet in Texas, in person, as a symbolic act, to look each other in the eyes and validate the reality of our typed expressions, desires, goals, and to engage with reality of the real, rather than reality of the virtual persuasion. We're going to drink beer and break bread at a real Doomstead Diner table. We're going to study Monolithic construction and plant some real seeds of change. We're going to build a rocket mass heater, have a hole diggin' contest, possibly film a spoof on the NTHE movie trailer 22 After, and get to know a handful of Diner's in person. I'll be bringing my family and my boomerangs.

Most importantly we're going to ferment in a real life think tank. That's what the Convocation is ultimately about. For me, it's a vetting, and it's a chance to look my fellow Diners in the eyes (I know, ironic considering my Aspie status, but I've always been atypical even amongst the atypical...consider that the majority of the medics thought I was weird when I worked EMS to gauge how weird I am...as it turns out, not weird just not neurotypical) and see what I see. Is the SUN Foundation worth my time? Is it something that can be real? Can we actually bioneer a Sunstead, or a Waterstead, or a Foxstead, or a Doomstead? Can we actually be the force that begins fixing this clusterfuck of a predicamentation civilization? Does RE really smoke six packs of cigarettes a day? Is William really bald and in love with the Goddess? Can Eddie fix my fucked up mouth full of metal (just kiddin' Eddie...at least this time). Will Haniel and I see Aspie to Aspie and relate to one another?

I'm looking forward to finding out the answer to all of those questions. For me, the Convocation is my chance to show everybody that I really am a 6' 4" bad ass Aikido ninja permaculture green wizard druid Aspie Diner. It's my chance to look them all in the eyes, Haniel included, in an attempt to pull as much of their true intentions out so that I can shine my hyperfocused understanding of the human psyche onto them. Here's hoping we'll all be comfortable, and that William won't get his feelings hurt when I dig a bigger hole in the Texas dirt. My wife Gypsy Mama, and my children Ayden Zen and Harper Tribann will be there as well (as far as I know they're the only children Diners...hell, Harper Tribann was born a Diner). Several Diners will converge in two weeks. To hear RE tell about it, you'll all get a chance to participate in real time on the net. I hear he's bought all of the recording devices he could find. If nothing else, for the first time, Diners will break bread at a real Diner table...in Texas...and I'll get too drunk and throw my boomerangs.

Petroleum Corn Sugared Zombies

Once again due to discussion over at the Doomstead Diner I've been asked to define what I consider a zombie to be. The issue is that the goal of the Diner is to "save as many as you can," and from what are we saving all of these people in need of saving? Well, if you don't know the answer to that question than I'm sorry to inform you that you are most likely a zombie. Now, don't go gettin' all pissed off at me cause you fit the description of a zombie. It's alright to be a zombie. At least you won't have to worry about not being able to find like minded folk to hang around with (which is a problem for us non-zombies). I'll now begin breaking down the requirements for membership in zombiehood. First I'll start with what Wikipedia has to say about zombies:

The idea of zombies is present in some South African cultures. In some communities it is believed that a dead person can be turned into a zombie by a small child. It is said that the spell can be broken by a powerful enough sangoma.

It is also believed in some areas of South Africa that witches can turn a person into a zombie by killing and possessing the victim's body in order to force it into slave labor. After rail lines were built to transport migrant workers, stories emerged about "witch trains". These trains appeared ordinary, but were staffed by zombie workers controlled by a witch. The trains would abduct a person boarding at night, and the person would then either be turned into a zombie worker, or beaten and thrown from the train a distance away from the original location.

This idea that a witch can turn somebody into a zombie by killing them and possessing their soul in order to shanghai them into slave labor is mostly what I mean when I call somebody a zombie. Only it's not a witch, it's the agents responsible for the Matrix's hologram that are controlling the zombies. This is mostly done via the thaumaturgy that's perpetuated by television, Hollywood, marketing, and the corporate directive dictating profit beyond all else. This all leaves the zombie blindly following business as usual (BAU) with no consciousness whatsoever about the consequences of BAU.

A zombie has no idea that petroleum is a limited resource on which we have built our civilization. They have no idea that you can't have infinite growth on a finite planet. They don't care about 400 ppm carbon in the atmosphere, and they likely don't care that America's number one goal is to bomb your ass and take your gas. They don't care that there is no precedent for GMO's (genetically modified organisms), that our oceans are acidifying, that our food causes cancer, that allopathic medicine causes cancer, that we are loosing our topsoil at an alarming rate, that our government has been coopted by multinational corporations concerned about nothing but profit whom have decimated the constitution and bill of rights, that we have no freedoms, that we live in a surveillance Big Brother state where they can indefinitely detain you and torture you for no reason other than you fit a profile, or that we are running out of the very energy that is needed to keep all 7 billion of us on planet Earth alive. I can go on and on, but you get the picture (or you don't...in which case you are a....zombie).

A zombie is incapable of seeing all of the above for what it is. The usual zombie response to any of the above information is that it's all a libearl conspiracy (or "conservative" one depending on which side of the puppet show you're on), or scientists know what they are doing and will figure out how to fix all of the problems, or you're just a kooky nut job for bringing any of that up. A zombie lives their life from day to day having no idea that anything is wrong with our society. They have no idea how close we are to what has been dubbed our "near term extinction" or NTE. This is the idea that we have so destroyed our biosphere that the damage is rapidly becoming irreversible, and that we will soon enter a period where the biosphere will no longer support human life due to exponentially increasing problems due to CO2 concentration (that 400 ppm figure), as well as a host of other environmental problems due mainly to our industrial chemical making proclivities...and lets not forget the nasty habit we have of splitting atoms to insure a continuous stream of free flowing electrons into the magical holes in our sheet rocked walls for the purposes of single use appliances like electric can openers and hair dryers. The problem with this being the nuclear waste that we collectively ignore. It's not that bad...just bury it or leave it in tanks indefinitely while the scientists come up with the solution. In a couple of hundreds of thousands of years it will no longer be radioactive anyways.

Okay, so you are a zombie if you see no problem with our particle boarded, car dependent, GMOed monocropped, processed chemical food, military/corporate industrial complex, Matrix controlled, NSA electronic communication data collecting, cancer causing for profit allopathic medicine perpetuated, biosphere destroying, petroleum fueled holographic suburban Orwellian New World Bravely carcinomic arrangement commonly called BAU. If you think BAU is just fuckin' dandy then you are a zombie, and I am not going to waste anymore time with you. I've tried wasting my time with zombies. I tried for years after taking the red pill that opened my eyes to the truth about the American Hologram. I tried telling everybody I knew about how poisonous our food is, and how we're destroying our biosphere to keep a civilization dependent on the limited resources that are fossil fuels alive. My efforts were rewarded with more ostracizing and sideways looks than I care to ruminate on. You see, liberating yourself from the Matrix/hologram complex makes you an Outkast. You become an Outkast because you wake up and realize that you've been subsisting by catabolizing your environment in an unsustainable fashion...that same environment that creates a sufficient amount of oxygen and fresh water to keep your zombie ass alive.

It should be clear now what makes a person a zombie. So why does any of that matter (I mean aside from the fact that anthropomorphic NTE is something a hefty percentage of non-zombies are finding it worth while to discuss just now)? It matters because at the Diner we are attempting to save as many people as we can from all of the NTE causing agents. Zombies are people to...so maybe we should change it to "save as many non-zombies as we can." If it were up to me it would be something like that. At the Diner, we are trying to come up with a model of human socioeconomic strategies and tactics to weather the bottleneck that has been created by all of the zombies blindness and their unquenchable desire for more petroleum sugared brains. We're trying to "bioneer" a way forward that pays attention to all of the problems our species has created. This is no easy task. We've dubbed this entity SUN for "sustaining universal needs," and hopefully the first SUN project will be creating a viable foxstead for us to hole up in while civilization finishes glutting itself to death on petroleum sugar and the sweat of third world brown child labor for iphones and Bananas.

The zombie issue has become an issue due to my distaste for the way zombies smell. It's not that I don't care about zombies because I do. I know they are people to (if we agree to be extremely loose with the definition for "people"). They all have the same Buddha nature as I, and they will all bleed if cut and suffer in the same way. They all have feelings, favorite songs, and laugh and cry just like I do. But they also like watching football and grilling concentrated animal feeding operation pellets over gas while eating genetically modified fried corn chips sprayed with chemical flavorings. I understand all of that, and that's fine...hell I eat CAFO food...but I'm just not happy about that fact and see a problem with it. Zombies mostly don't like to read and prefer to have their world views issued to them by thaumaturic idiot panel MSM news. They DON'T SEE A PROBLEM with our society other than that gasoline is costing a bit too much these days...and so is the food...and medicine...and well just about everything else now that I think about it. And this is the main difference between a Zombie and an aspiring post-petroleum human; a zombie does not do anything about any of these problems because they aren't aware of them. But wait...what am I thinking for? Oh well, my favorite football team is on...holy shit did you see that sack...he got nailed like a motherfucker...that shit was crazy wasn't it. Pass the corn beer and chips...wait...what was I just talking about?

Nothing, you weren't talking about anything, you should get back to your beer and chips. Nothing to worry about, nothing to see here, go back to sleep America...your government is here to protect and provide for you. They will grow all of the food, keep all of the steady evolving microorganisms at bay with petrochemicals, and bomb all of the brown people for gas on your behalf. You just eat your chips and drink your beer and the scientists will figure out all of the problems. You can be a zombie, but don't come runnin' to the foxstead when diesel is 6 dpg at the pump and our just in time trucking insanity stops being viable. You didn't do shit to deal with the realities outside of the flatlands projected by the hologram. You didn't care to concern yourself with the dire reality we're inheriting for the ride down the back side of Hubbert's curve. I consider zombies nothing more than nature selecting the next quantum leap in the human genome. As in zombies will mostly be deselected for that leap. This is not a value judgement. This is just facts facilitated by the red pill.

Go back to sleep Zombie America...there's a zombie apocalypse coming to a theater near you any day now. With any luck I will be surrounded by nature and in the company of a post-petroleum human tribe when that apocalypse kicks off. Thanks to you that probably won't be the case. I'll probably still be here, slaving away with the zombies, trying to figure out how the hell to build a lifeboat out of the refuse from this plastic fabrication of a boat we call civilization. If I manage to cobble together said boat...you ain't gonna be welcome on it. It's not like belief in Jesus Christ...where you can be a shit bag your entire life and then repent just before your last breath gaining you access to heaven. No, I've seen you take your last breath, and I won't be mourning you. However, there still is time for you to wake up and stop eating brains. So do that...wake up now, while you still can, and be welcome amongst my tribe. Or...perish with the zombie horde. Either way I'm not going to lose any sleep over you...and you're not welcome at the foxstead as a zombie. It's nothing personal...just I've got a family to support.

You see, I'm holding you responsible for your beliefs. If you are an adult than you are responsible for what you believe and don't believe. You are responsible for knowing the truth about things. Nobody forced me to open my eyes up and develop a distaste for brains. I decided that I wanted to know what the truth was because it was time to grow up and take responsibility for myself. I've done that. Zombies don't do that. Zombies get on fukitol and watch football drunk and satiated on all manner of petroleum corn sugar, and zombies will watch the zombie apocalypse on the idiot panel during the halftime marketing break. Not me, hopefully I'll be outside in nature trying to facilitate the growth of food that's not dependent on petroleum to gain the calories I'll need to keep me and mine alive once the JIT truckin' inanity comes to an end. Zombies will most likely be shot on sight and burned in large piles. Such are the concerns us evolving post-petroleum humans have here at the precipice of near term human extinction. 

BTW...I have no idea why Blogger decided the text color needed to change in this entry...every time I use the quote option that happens.  ??? 

legionomous anonymous awenomitly

 3/13/13

That's a lot of threes isn't it? It doesn't matter what spiritual what-have-yous you subscribe to, it's sorta hard to get around the fact that three is a holy number. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; the three temptations, the three rays of light descending on us from the heavens via rowan staves encircled with ogham. The ternary that breaks the binary that is dualistic envisioning. That's the meaning of the gray in the gray area that resides in our unknowing monkey mind. There is more than just left/right, up/down, democrat/republican, God/Satan, good/bad thinking. There is that which can't even be seen yet with a 20th century mind because it doesn't contain the proper lens to see it. The 21st century mind is in the business of evolving just now. It must evolve to survive the next large adaptation that is this experiment of life on Earth. It is evolving that lens capable of seeing this new layer of complexity.

We continue bickering with one another about money and how it matters still. It does matter...but just barely. It's approaching the no longer matters mark however. That mark has many historical precedents to pull from. None of those precedents are precedented in this Orwellian New World Bravely that we are entering. This is the last fascicle of the control paradigms hypoxic power grab. Lot's of grabbing going on out there just now. It's starting to get desperately close to unable to deny status. We all know it, but many among us like to pretend like drones aren't already assassinating Americans and sodium amytal isn't already being used by the prosecution for Spanish inquisition like mind manipulation....pheww. Wasn't sure I'd get all of that out before I lost my train of thought.

Here's to the germinal post-petroleum fiber-optically connected interweb tribe. Sounds funky doesn't it? There is a nation of Foxsteaders popping up like mushrooms. The time is coming where the veil will drop and we will all see each other standing. Mike Ruppert likes to use that analogy. We are all in a large stadium, the masses, and the hologram makes it appear that nobody is standing. We are standing, and we are starting to see that we are not the only one standing. The illusion is starting to dissolve because the energy that sustains it is vanishing. That means we can now begin to see each other. We can see that we are legion, and we are not going to be counted by any machine. We will go to the margins and watch the machine run out of fuel. It will rust as metal is wont to do when met with the elements found in mother nature. Metals turns to rust and are transmuted into blood given a long enough time line.

Now we must believe that we will outlast the machines dying prominence. We must accept that so that we can begin the business of moving on into the reality of the future, and not the denial. So many intellectuals like to argue about what we think we know about nature, reality, and matter. What we think we know does not matter. We know nothing. There is a place where music emanates providing sound to a joyless world. The vocal chords evolved to reach out into physical space and be heard. There are those among us who can yell at the machine without being heard. We can stomp up and down and beat our noise makers and they will not notice our objections. We can stand in front of an imperial tank and demand a line that won't be crossed with our bodies...and we can pour gasoline over our heads and strike a match. We can bite a bullet and check out, but what of our children? What will they do with us checked out?

It's time to stop living an illusion. It's easy: wake up. Denial only distorts the truth. What is the point of existence on this Earth without Truth? It's a simple equation really. We don't need books to know what it is. We don't need our hyperintelligent monkey brains to experience joy and healing. We have a choice to make between nature and electrical artifacts broadcast via teevee and memory hole mind control. The truth is being accessed by more and more of us in an exponentially expanding function of interconnectivity. If we don't believe in the 100th monkey than he will never be. He can be, but not in a cornucopian hallucination of suburban consumer consumption projected via the American Hologram.

So the legion of us I've been referring to of late. We are looking for land over the horizon. We pushed off in a vessel designed to catch the trade winds of our imagination and collective faith in Earth based breathing and dancing life. No space ship is going to transport us to some new land full of infinite resources to infinitely squander into mindless wasteland heaps of thoughtless drivel. Hands in the Earth and hands in dirt. Stones to absorb the minerals we need for formation. Water for our spiritual transmissions concerning our collective emergence. The wind we need to alchemicalize spirit into accessible AWEN. Fire we need to remember pain in the form of the final convolution. Is this Zion? This post petroleum Foxstead tribal nation? Do we dance and allow beautiful music to guide us? Or do we lay down as the totalitarian totalitarians totalize our trashmission into wasteful oblivion via boot stomps to the face? The choice is ours.  We are legionomous anonymous awenomitly.