“The mystery religions were instituted in order to protect the marvels of the commonplace from those who would devalue them.” Peter Redgrove

“Here then, at the outset, is a potent secret which is inaccessible to the majority of people; a secret which they will never guess and which it would be useless to tell them: the secret of their own stupidity.” Eliphas Lévi [Stupidity? Bit harsh don't you think? Or maybe not... ]

Mysteries, esotericism, the occult: these words bring up images of secret orders, with strange rituals and sharing their secrets only to the select few. Historically this has been true, and is still true today. I’m sure most of us have heard of the Freemasons, for example. But information that was esoteric in the past isn’t so much now, and the content in many modern day “mystery schools” is out in the open. I’ve been told by a Wiccan that most, if not all the information of Alexandrian and Gardenarian traditions, is out there already, and as a member of druid order (OBOD) I can see that a lot of the information isn’t necessarily esoteric, but the structure by which it is presented is; it is meant to guide you through certain information along a certain way, instead of having to wade through the chaos trying to make sense of things by yourself (though this also has its virtues).

There are many subjects that are “esoteric” to me, and there are people with specialised knowledge in which I am not trained. Quantum physics for example, is an esoteric subject for me, though I understand or know of some ideas from it. Through the ages there have always been people with specialised knowledge and those without. I rely on the “esoteric” knowledge of builders, plumbers and electricians to fix what I can’t. School, colleges and universities are “esoteric” organisation, sharing their knowledge with the fortunate few (though in recent centuries education has become more open, not to just an elite class).

What really makes these subjects esoteric for me is my own willingness, ability and necessity to understand these things. There is nothing barring my way from understanding them except my own limits. And it is much the same for anybody. The “exoteric” information is simply data that the general public can understand, whilst “esoteric” information is what we don’t. And the boundary between exoteric and esoteric is always changing as the understanding of the general public changes.

If I want to understand something, I will. If I am able to understand it, I will. If I need to understand something, I will. And these three things, more often than not, should coincide. A year and a half ago the world of linguistics was very unknown for me, but I have since waded into the subject and understand more than I thought I would have. Though there still remain things I have a lot to learn about.

All “esoteric” information is out there, in plain sight. What “hides” or limits it, rather than secret orders (thought we might assume there are some), is simply my own need, want and ability to understand certain information. “Know thyself”, at the heart of esotericism, is something that no one can hide from you, except yourself.

“We thus learn out native language not mentally but bodily. We appropriate new words and phrases first through their expressive tonality and texture, through the way they feel in the mouth or roll of the tongue, and it is this direct, felt significance – the taste of a word or phrase, the way it influences or modulates the body – that provides the fertile, polyvalent source for all the more refined and rarefied meanings which that term may come to have for us.” David Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous

Learning and creating languages is an interesting intellectual pursuit, but I think there’s more depth to it than that, something I’ve discovered in my exposure to other languages. The idea being that language goes back to our primal roots, through cries, grunts, murmurs, screams. The calls of animals we hear in the wild places are the primal matrix from which languages evolved, like the first light sensitive cell on a microorganism that eventually became an eye.

Our first experience of language acquisition is instinctive, not intellectual; it is something experienced by the body, and from there our learning of language is built up. Looking through a dictionary we might be mistaken that language is a purely intellectual pursuit, something “raised above” our instincts, and that translation between languages is just a logical pursuit of matching meanings of the words and/or parallel grammatical approaches.

Perhaps this is the reason I never learnt French in school (despite 6 years of learning), because the formal approach in a school doesn’t resonate emotionally or instinctively with us; it doesn’t access the roots of language. It’s well known that emersion in a language is the best way to learn, and that’s certainly the case with me: I’ve learnt more French and Spanish since living with them.

Sometimes I say something in Spanish, not because I know intellectually that it is correct, but because I have a gut feeling that some words or phrases are correct. I think even if I make mistakes in another language (or my own even) it is understood because I am learning to speak from a “gut feeling” level and am understood at the same level. The flow of the words (or even their non-flow) can communicate more than the words themselves.

I think even the written word, though supposedly abstracted from our bodies, can have an effect on us. Going back to gut instinct, we can get a feeling for the words on a page, not just their dictionary meanings. So much has been done so that our experience of the body is distrusted, and I think that use of language has a lot to do with it. If we trust the sensations of the body through our languages a whole new level of communication is accessible.

“There is but one cause of human failure. And that is man’s lack of faith in his true Self.” William James

“It is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.” René Descarte

Ever since Socrates started to question the basis of our ethics and morals philosophers have questioned and questioned until we can only shrug our shoulders and resign ourselves to an “I don’t know”. But this comes from assuming one thing; that the basis of our ethics should be explainable. We are faced with resorting to “because I say so” or “because that’s the way it is” and expose our inability to come up with the rhetoric to sustain our argument.

Yes, the post-modernists are right, there is no wrong or right (paradoxically making the post-modernists neither wrong nor right in their rightness), except what we make right or wrong. Any wrong or right we perceive are social constructs. We live in an ethical and existential void, with no inherent values, that we are forced to make sense of ourselves, so some Existentialists would have us believe.

So, just make it up as we go along right, as though we are tabula rasa?

In a postmodern society, where all points of view are relative and equally valid or invalid, it is easy to lose perspective, even of what is innate within us. The infant human being learns to absorb and reflect the qualities of its society. It is no surprise then that a child born in a “postmodern world” would feel tabula rasa, that they could not even trust their own being.

René Descarte came to an interesting conclusion, when he considered the philosophical possibility everything he experienced was the result of a demon tricking him, otherwise known as “the method of doubt”. Out of all the things he could be sure of, what could he really be sure of? In the end he came up with what he called his First Certainty, which most of us will recognise as; “I think, therefore I am” or more simply “I exist”. In the end, Descarte thinks, the one thing that we can depend on is the “self”, the thinker, the “I”, even if everything else can be considered an “illusion”. Unfortunately it was an “I” divorced from physical embodiment, a ghost in a machine, if you like.

At this point a Zen Master may apply a well deserved Zen Slap: “So, that pain you feel on your cheek, is it real or illusory?” Descarte’s thinker may, in the end, conclude that no matter the answer that’s it’s probably worthwhile saying that the pain is real, especially after a few more well applied Zen Slaps. Some pragmatist thinkers, like William James, would think the same; “real pain” versus “illusory pain” seem so indistinguishable as to be a meaningless distinction, you might as well act as if  “illusory pain” is “real” until experience tells you otherwise. If it’s reliable as an experience it’s probably true.

When all society offers us is an existential void, we learn to distrust. We distrust the world around us, we distrust our experience, we may even learn to distrust ourselves. The void has swallowed us.

Exept some experiences are so persistent they cannot be denied out of hand. One of these, as I believe Descarte correctly identified, was the “I” at the centre of thought and experience that I described in Anatta and the Importance of Personhood as:

And yet, there it remains; a strong, persistent sense of self. Despite changing over time, despite interruptions in the flow of consciousness called sleep, there is a strong sense of continuity, that, despite being different ages and with different personal qualities, the “I” ten years ago is the same “I” that is experience by this brain now.

Another is that this sense of self is inextricably attached to a body and therefore the undeniable (whether real or illusory) pain of the Zen Slap. There are some experiences that can be trusted, a rare quality for any person to have!

Going back to Socrates and his continuous questioning (whose philosophical purpose was to “know thyself”, not to nit-pick by the way); we may lose trust in many things, but there are many things we cannot deny, or if we do they hang around like a bad smell. It’s good to question everything, and thoroughly, but it doesn’t pay to live with a feeling that you can’t trust anything. It’s not in human nature to live without meaning… well, I don’t think so. I tried very hard, casting doubt at it from every direction, but this feeling just wouldn’t go away!

At some point the human mind has to find its orientation, and form itself and its world around that orientation. It doesn’t have top be some great big mythological epic, detailing some super-cosmic story that explains EVERYTHING!!! but we do need something, even if it’s thinking about where the next meal comes from.

Following Pragmatist philosophy I think it’s good to trust basic experience and build on that, until experience tells me differently. There is a “me”, no matter how many times I try to fool myself I am “just” a bundle of neurons. I am a physical presense (body) in the “world”, which, incidently, does exist. And there is a a way of telling right from wrong, and it’s called a conscience. I chose to trust these things as far as I may, as far as my experience tells me that they work.

With so much cultural bias and disillusionment it’s easy to see how we learn to distrust in the basic realities of experience, and abstract ourselves from what is right in front of us, what makes our very being; the “I”, conscience, sense, thoughts. We aren’t without some references to go with. And at times they’re not rationally explainable, they just “feel right”.

So, go on, I dare you; trust your Self. You might find it’s worth it.

As  kid I was told by a teacher that I “should be a monk.” Because I was very quiet. Meant as a joke but it has left it’s mark in me (a good mark I mean). You know, jokes that adults make sometimes get taken seriously by unwitting kids. I really thought I’d become a monk (even a saint!). Since then I’ve lost my faith, (well, it transformed really, into something it wasn’t before) and I don’t know any suitable monastic communities to attach myself to with my present beliefs.

And now I’ve learnt that the cornerstone of the monastic life are the vows of ”poverty, obedience and celibacy” (not silence, lol). And the part of me that is still a bit of a monk wants to make sense of these, reconcile them with my lifestyle that isn’t celibate, doesn’t shun money and doesn’t obey any sort of Church hierarchy. I like the idea of a life dedicated to contemplation and spirituality, but something that’s more involved with the world, not hidden in a cloister.

And so here are my thoughts:

I made a connection the other day between the subjects in the title. The monastic vows being celibacy (sex), poverty (money) and obedience (power). The hope of those that make monastic vows is to deny the influence of the three sources of “sin”: money, sex and power. If truth be told these three things are, perhaps, the most contentious and controversial subjects, and many problems, especially in human relationships are based upon these three (those monastics were on to something I think). If these three can be resolved then most human problems and relationship issues are most probably resolved.

So the answer according to monks and nuns? Deny them. Renounce them. Renounce personal ownership of wealth and problems of “having too much” or “not having enough” go away, and because there is “an eternal wealth awaiting us beyond this world”. Renounce sexuality and those wayward urges don’t have a place to intefere with the important things in life (like praying). Renounce personal will, defer it to a “higher power” and you don’t have to worry about making the wrong decisions or taking responsibility for something too big for you.

But this, in my view, only sweeps problems under the proverbial carpet. Money, sex and power will not go away. Thousands, millions of people have taken these vows and the problems still exist. Small groups of people have managed, with mixed results, to find a little pocket away from all these “bad influences”. But they have not managed to effectively resolve these issues for the world.

Energy cannot be destroyed, it can only be changed or diverted. The energy that money, sex and power represent cannot be effectively renounced. It is still there, being repressed. Being dammed up and fit to burst! Engineers know that rivers cannot be stopped but only diverted, unless you stop the rain (ask a miracle from God).

The conventional way is to get carried away by these currents. Put in other terms we become ruled by money, sex and power. We become their servants and they are the driving forces behind our lives, our raison d’etre.

Two choices: to resolve these powerful forces by denying them (even if, really, they cannot be denied) or just don’t bother to resolve them and be controlled by them (seemingly easy but fraught with problems).

But a third choice remains: to embrace these forces and to redirect their energies to positive ends. A working principle that means that money, sex and power creatively serve human life and relationships instead of being forces that rule human life. Instead of reducing human life to these dimensions, or cutting them out of human life altogether they can become forces to enhance a more whole way of being human.

Jesus said “Man was not made for the Sabbath but the Sabbath for man.” Religion, and any of the vows that go along with it, are made for us, not us for them.

We don’t have to make vows of poverty, obedience and chastity. We don’t have to resign ourselves to greed, domination and lust. We just have to put money, sex and power in their proper perspective; in service of life.

And so, hear me now and my monastic vow*…

I vow to take responsibility for my wealth, enjoy it, not be controlled by it and apply it in the service of life.

I vow to take responsibility for my sexuality, enjoy it, not be controlled by it and apply it in the service of life.

I vow to take responsibility for my power, enjoy it, not be controlled by it and apply it in the service of life.

And not a robe in sight…

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*vows more as an process ongoing process rather than rules to live by! Can anyone be that perfect?

In a language there isn’t just words to communicate with, there is also a whole psychological structure specific to it. It gives us a model with which to view the world and to communicate about the world we sense, both the world within and the world without. But it also gives us our identity, since each language has its own history and also its own character. That character transmits itself into us a “national personality,” a sort of personality that deeply structures the human psyche from birth. In other words, stereotypes.

On one hand this can be useful; as we can see that languages and the qualities they carry are the accumulation of experience from history. Through language we are being transmitted the “wisdom of the ancestors”. On the other hand it can also carry the rubbish, the karma, of the past which is undeserved by future generations. Language isn’t just an encoding of ancestral wisdom, it has also acted as a waste bin to conveniently give the load of one generations responsibilities on to the next.

Time to sort the wheat from the chaff. Time to make a review of the type of language we use and how we use it. Say no to what is useless and harmful and encourage the growth of what is useful and healthy. Languages contain patterns, and we have to ask ourselves do we really want to repeat the past blindly? In a synchronicity a friend made a comment on Facebook about not letting an anger he had inherited from his ancestors carry on further. His affirmation that since it was not his it would stop with him and within him.

Like this we can all reject the “mob- reaction” within us, the stereotypes that have been transmitted to us through the generations, and so, as the Great Invocation says, “seal the door where evil dwells.”

For me it has been an important experience to move to another country and see my own country from “outside”, to see it from a different perspective and see its virtues in comparison to other cultures and also its vices . And so also see myself from an other perspective. Learning a new culture, and a new language, makes me rely less on the “safety blanket” of my native culture and seek to communicate with the world in a new way, and so I can only grow, retaining the benefits of my culture and discarding the disadvantages of it too, and adopting a broader view of the world that is not so limited.

La humanidad no sirve la nacionalidad, la nacionalidad sirve la humanidad. Hay mas que una lengua en el mundo y por eso el aprender otras lenguas, sólo es sentido común, el sentido de la humanidad (Thanks Mika for correcting this).

“Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.” Leo Buscaglia

A relative, who has studied psychology, said something which suprised me: that some psychology uses mathematical formulae to understand the human mind (something that he didn’t agree with by the way).

I sort of knew it, but… I mean… I’m… it’s… I mean… REALLY!?

Ok, maybe you can get some idea of how some things work in the human mind like that, it might be worth an experiment in the name of science, but… really?!

The problem, sorry, the “problem” with this approach is the human mind is better understood qualitively than quantatively. Is a person a nice predictable, defineable quantity that can easily fit into mathematical formula? ………. R E A L L Y ? !

Head. Brick wall. Head. Brick wall.

Personhood may not be an empirically proveable reality, as in when you take apart all those neurons and when you start dissecting personhood with words and formulae it disappears. Personhood is a gut feeling, it’s a reality of human perception. When I point at “you” there is a curious and very concrete reaction within the lump of meat encased in a skull. “You” know exactly what I mean and it needs no formal explanation to understand. Without it we’d be robots, programmed along predictable lines and would not be such a challenge to the filing system of bureaucracy.

Bureaucracy is a symptom of having a very large, unwieldy, convoluted and messy society. It’s a way of keeping it organised and balanced in its daily functioning. But it is impersonal and quantitive and is not made for “persons”. Reducing the study of the human mind into something logical is a symptom of this impersonal system and, I think, detached from the real human perception of personhood. It’s not something that shouldn’t be studied, it could prove to be useful in its place. But human psychology cannot be reduced to that, and I suppose that the people that do this “mathematical” type of psychology know that (or if they don’t they’re in for a nasty shock lol).

In working with persons, there has to be a basic value: that of valuing personhood, of respecting it and of understanding it in the way it can be understood. Personhood, in my opinion, is something sacred, and it should not be reduced to a “mere” quantity. And perhaps this is why many people just aren’t interested in it, because the way it sometimes works just doesn’t value a person enough. *

One film I recommend (though with some caution, it is quite hard) is Family Life by Ken Loach. It has a good example of the different approaches in psychology, one being a more human form of therapy and another which looks more traumatic than therapeutic. One treats the person, the other treats the behaviour and puts the person on hold. Check out this IMDb link here.

And that’s why I hate paper work. Just saying it I get a bad taste in my mouth. Seriously, I could have half-filled in application forms for various works sitting in a drawer for months. I could never explain why I didn’t like it, especially as people would say “You’ve got to do it, you can’t avoid it.” But now I know, it’s because I’m more person than robot LOL.

But that’s another rant…

*I had two councellors in my teenage years. One good and one bad. The “good one” spoke to me as a human being. It was like having a “chat”, though a chat about important stuff. The “bad one” asked fairly formulaic questions, repeating “How did that make you feel?” type questions that didn’t really me tounderstand myself. Those questions are designed to help you reflect on your thoughts and feeling – hahaha :-/

A little while ago someone said to me “Psychology doesn’t work.” I felt a bit defensive about this, since I am studying psychology (with Psychosynthesis and Ecopsychology) and find it a valuable and useful tool in my work. But it soon occurred to me that they were right! Psychology doesn’t work at all. It’s just a bunch of theories and methods for knowing and working with the human mind. Just tools.

People work, not psychology. People make psychology work.

If you are not willing to look within yourself and understand yourself using psychology then of course it doesn’t work! People go to therapy or counselling hoping that some “magic wand” (or pill) will help them get better, that somehow you just turn up and They; the therapists, psychiatrists and counsellors will do something. They don’t. They can only share their understanding and help facillitate your inner work. Maybe they can help start the process of inner healing with their knowledge and understanding but it’s not them that will have to follow through and accomplish the work (though sometimes these psychological facillitators may not always be competent, as I’ve found out, further undermining the value of psychology). Will power is a very important part of the process; the willingness to look at yourself and do the necessary work.

It’s a common delusion that someone else can work on your own psychological processes. That’s the delusion. There’s no one else in that mind except you and yourself. You will have to face Yourself someday, in the end. Know thyself (and what a journey that’s been, and will continue to be!).

To reflect on the quote above; of course talking doesn’t make “things” better. It’s not “things” that understand words but people. People understand words, they understand their significance, and words can help affect changes within. To give one example they can work like a release valve, releasing some of the pressure within (“A problem shared is a problem halved,” as they say).

And sometimes you don’t even need another person to hear them, sometimes it’s just worthwhile to put your inner thoughts and feelings into words that can help clarify and reflect on what’s going on (for years I’ve found this release mostly through poetry. In fact any art will do). But communication of inner thoughts and feelings also stops people from becoming isolated within themselves, proper communication, not just talking for the sake of talking. Talking for the sake of creating understanding.

Psychology doesn’t work, people do.

Why are post-apocalyptic films so resonant? Why do they speak to us as though they are relevant? Is it because they talk about something that will happen?

Or is it because they are talking about something that has happened, and in fact is happening now?

Appearances aren’t what they seem. What Denzel is describing isn’t just something that happens before a apocalypse, something that creates it, it itself is he apocalypse. Instead he is describing an apocalyptic world! The Buddha was right, the action that creates the karma is the karma itself.

Let’s face it, whilst there are lots of nasty happenings in the world can we really believe that everything is right in the wealthier countries? We’re in the midst of an apocalypse right now, but some countries can hide it better than others. But how long can we hide it?

Ok ok ok, maybe saying “apocalypse” may be a bit of an exaggeration. And by that I mean I don’t expect the Four Horsemen to materialize and cause havoc, the anti-Christ to wage war or the Kingdom of God to miraculously descend on Earth after all the bad things have happened. Or that the Earth suddenly stop existing, like it really is the “end of the world”.

But there is something not quite right. And apocalypse seems to be a frighteningly relevant word even if not particularily accurate.

I look at our “wealth” and have a feeling that something isn’t quite right, that it’s all a lot of a show and no substance, that the foundation is all a bit, well, flimsy to say the least. A look at the facts about peak oil shows just how flimsy. We have built a stone castle of cardboard foundations!

What are the essentials for living a fulfilling and healthy life that don’t include “lots of stuff”?

How can we dig down through the foundations of our society and find the bedrock that we really need?

Can we do it before this Great Edifice collapses on us?

And what is it that we really need to build and develop?

One thing’s for sure, some films get you thinking and questioning… and if more people do that we are en route to a better world.

The quote above hints at something, and that is the values we hold, the values that lead us to use or misuse the world around us… and each other.

We build our world by our values. What values are we building with?

“Buddhism is often accused of being a religion so aborbed in the impersonal and the eternal that it overlooks the importance of individual and temporal things. According to its teachings, all things that have form are subject to change and void of any enduring “self,” but this does not imply that such things are unimportant.” Alan Watts

“It may only be a certain nagging sense that the world you live in does not fit. The job you hold, the education you recieve, the institutions that claim authority over you ( the government, the corporations, the courts, the welfare system), all these may seem to have been crudely designed for everybody in general, but for no body in person – least of all you.” Theodore Roszak, Person/Planet

“And still, you know, with an instinctive conviction, that there is an essential you behind all the world’s imposed identities, a you that needs a meaning of your own making, a personal emblem to hold in the face of grief and before the advance of death.” TR

“To give a face to the faceless, a voice to the voiceless – and to each person the one face, the one voice that is uniquely theirs… that is the meaning of personhood.” TR

In Buddhism there is the idea of anatta or no-self. That really the self is just a composition of various elements, converging and diverging in a series of rebirths. Science seems to confirm this; “I” am just a product of a highly developed neurological system, evolved in order to give coherence to the psychological experience of being an organism, itself constituted from various cells, genes, molecules and atoms in a state of flux or “rebirths”.

According to this explanation self is an experience that appears when I awaken and disappears when I go to sleep. If this is the case then “I” do not exist when the brain rests, and perhaps it is a different “I” that wakes up than the one going to sleep the night before. Perhaps “I” am a different “I” every moment time passes. The brain is not static, all cells and molecules within it are in a constant state of flux and nor is its sense of self.

And yet, there it remains; a strong, persistent sense of self. Despite changing over time, despite interruptions in the flow of consciousness called sleep, there is a strong sense of continuity, that, despite being different ages and with different personal qualities, the “I” ten years ago is the same “I” that is experience by this brain now.

Science says I am an impersonal package of impersonal neurons and synapses evolved to ensure the survival of the whole organism and the species of which I am a part. They may well be right, and I don’t deny there is truth to that. But really, let’s be serious, this is not how I experience myself, and no matter how many times I try to convince myself otherwise there’s that persistent feeling that “I” am there and “I” am very real and undeniable.

And with a scientific view we might say that this is fine, it’s way we have evolved, it’s how the organism survives and ensures the survival of its species. But even such a reductionist explanation still doesn’t quite do it justice, not the way I live it every day of my life. I feel it needs more honouring than that (and perhaps that’s just another survival trait?).

From an impersonal “soup” we call the Universe, a person can emerge, consciousness can take on a personal form! Not like it is imposed from somewhere “outside” or “beyond” but that personality is latent in the physical laws of the Universe. “I” existed as sleeping potential in the very fabric of the Universe, but without form or presence. And then an impersonal egg and sperm came together and began a journey that would lead to personhood through a miracle of biology and neurology, with millions of years of evolution preceding this moment. And this has happened not just once but many times over. Millions of persons. Billions of persons. Individual persons, not just masses of people.

Amazing that each human face and each human voice is so distinctive as to not be confused with anybody else… most of the time. Imagine over 6 Billion people with a face and a voice that is uniquely theirs! And that’s only now, imagine all the unique humans there have been and the unique humans there will be! Even animals transmit some sort of instinctive self, if my Cocker Spaniel is in a room of similar Cocker Spaniels I’ll still know which one is “her”. It is imprinted in me. Something that happens with people we don’t know as well, though seem to know so well…

You hear a voice on the radio, you see a face on the TV and instantly you have a sense of recognition. Sometimes you may not remember the name or why they are famous but instantly you know it is that person and no one else. Looking at a DVD cover right now I see a woman’s face, I don’t recognise her. I see a name -Kate Beckinsale- and instant recognition comes to me, it is her, much much younger but you see it is the same “person”. And turning over to the back I see another picture of her with another man poring over a map or something and I recognise him instantly; Art Malik. I see only his face looking down, can’t see much of a profile but I know it is him. Why can’t I mistake him for anyone else if he and I are just impersonal bundles of neurons and synapses amongst billions?

Impossible! Isn’t it? And what if it isn’t impossible, what if it is true? Doesn’t that make it even more of a miracle that “I” am here communicating with “you”?

How can individual unique persons be so “mass produced” in such an unconscious and impersonal Universe? The mind boggles! The mind gropes for some plausible fantasy to explain this; a “superbeing” “out there,” or manifest destiny, or a ghost in the machine, or, or, or…

It’s a miracle of nature, an implausible reality, to distill many millions, billions, trillions of impersonal elements; like cells, atoms, subatomic particles, through long long processes of evolution to finally arrive at personhood! The machine is the ghost! There I am. And there you are!

Miracles, each of us.

“Rebuilding local agriculture and food production, localising energy production, rethinking healthcare, rediscovering local building materials in the context of zero energy building, rethinking how we manage waste, all build resilience and offer the potential of an extraordinary renaissance – economic, cultural and spiritual.” Rob Hopkins, The Transition Handbook: From Oil Dependency to Local Resilience

I have only just learnt about Peak Oil. I’ve been more interested in a parallel subject; climate change, and must have skipped over this one completely. But then I’ve also been realising that this issue really isn’t that well known in general, so I’m passing the message along!

I knew long ago what the definition of “non-renewable” was and how that fits in with fossil fuels, but I didn’t know when or what would be happening. After reading The Long Emergency and now reading The Transitions Handbook my eyes are opening a little wider.

But Peak Oil isn’t about having no more oil, this is an issue that happens before then, when we have reached the maximum amount of oil we’ll ever use in history, after which oil becomes more scarce and more difficult to extract and thus more expensive. It’s also when demand for it outweighs supply, clearly a balance that just doesn’t work.

And it’s not a case of replacing oil for other sources of energy because oil represents an energy source that has been created over a long amount of time, storing energy from the sun that arrived on he Earth long ago. It’s like we’re rereleasing all of that energy, whereas something like solar can only absorb as much solar energy as there is in the sky at one time.

There’s something called Energy Return On Energy invested (EROEI). If you’ve ever had to live with a log fire you know that energy has to be put in (chopping, purchase, transport, lighting and maintaining) to get energy out (heat and light). At one point the EROEI of oil was 100:1, which means you could invest one unit of energy or money and get 100 units back. Now it’s closer to 20:1.

Other energy sources have much lower EROEI. Here’s a website with some EROEI figures: http://www.eroei.com/eroei/evaluations/net-energy-list/

Other energy sources will replace some of what oil supplied us with, but no where near the amounts we’ve had in the last century or so. This means not only a change in infrastructure but also in the lifestyles of people.

You can see this as a crisis (long emergency) or an opportunity (transition). In truth it’ll be an uneven mix with not one or the other in different parts of the world. Places where their pre-industrial economies have remained intact may not feel the impact of this so much and also places that have prepared for a post-oil world ( such as the Transitions Movement- http://www.transitiontowns.org/ ).

One thing’s for sure, we’re going to be seeing changes which’ll effect us all for How we take that is up to us (all).