The View from my Bicycle (Column)

Do you always play by the rules?

I can empathise with the character in American Beauty, who, seeing a plastic bag blowing in the autumn wind, saw all the inexpressible beauty of the world. I have a cliched view of beauty, yet it transcends the typical. Because I am a man I see beauty in the opposite sex just as any other man does. But I also feel that I see - or seek to see - a beauty that is even deeper. The Beauty of Truth, of Innocence, the Beauty of - and the metaphor for - the Human Condition. And likewise, I sometimes feel there is so much I am going to burst.

On Saturday I watched the rugby in Melrose Arch gym whilst cycling. In itself it was an amazing experience, partly because of the historic win. It is ironic that while I am reading about Hansie and revisiting some painful memories of Grey College, that the vital two points we needed to win for the first time against the All Blacks came from Old Grey Frans Steyn's boot in the last few minutes of the game. This was a team that had lost its captain and Vice-Captain. A monumental moment, and somehow appropriate that Steyn should shoulder it. Of course, 1 minute later he fluffed an ordinary kick. Such is life, so moments propel us forward first with honor and so much riding on the result, the next, the moment is past.

There was a girl who appeared during the game, dressed in a white jumpsuit, perfectly slim and youthful, with the hair of a goddess and a name that ought to be something like Columbia. Later, when she was training behind me, her face had a a deep red blush of exhaustion, and I saw her for what she was: just a girl, a sweating human being...but still beautiful. The second impression though was the more valuable, because the second impression was not of an idol, but of the real someone.

A few hours ago I had a similar experience in a pub called the Jolly Roger, in Parkhurst, Johannesburg. But it would be remiss of me to mention this beauty, the unblemished glowing skin, without mentioning the freckles, the scar tissue, the skin cancer that sweeps like a great tide across the world. Becuase right alongside the compelling and heartbreaking beauty that exists in the world, there is also tragedy. It may sound poetic, it may even sound romantic, but a darkness is coming. A darkness of disorder and unprecedented difficulty. For some it has already descended, for others, it approaches inevitably like the dusk at the end of The Great Day of the World. And it will usher in a brand new age, a brand new way of living once the long night has passed.

The rich will be immune from this - for a time - for as long as they have resources to protect themselves from rampaging mobs of newly disenfranchised, the newly hungry and jobless. If your family possesses a farm, or property, enough to grow food and use its own resources - well this will provide some resilience, some light and warmth against the approaching shadows.

I use the word resilience purposefully. Heinberg has mentioned it too,

[Watch Matt Simmons here].
from the point of view now that despite many warnings, many tours of the US university speech circuit by him and others, we've lost a vital opportunity to change. In my own family I have cautioned against buying property and suffered the ire of all my closest relatives. Now though my brother is moving out of his house to rent with his girlfriend. My sister and my father just 6 months ago were twisting my arm to buy a property, and I have to say, I am ready to buy one, and keen to buy one. Except I knew the time then and now was (and remains) the worst time to invest in property.

According to Ian Olivier of Ian Olivier Properties, up to 90% of Port Elizabeth‘s residential properties are selling for less than their asking prices – with some sellers taking cuts of 30% or more. “On average, we‘re finding that sellers are accepting offers of 10% less than their original listing price, with some dropping substantially more,” he said.

The listed property sector has declined 30% since it's high in November. Growth in residential house prices is at its lowest levels in 9 years. In the Saturday Star's PERSONAL FINANCE section they adsvertise a presentation by a guy called Duncan who worked at JP Morgan, the Financial Times and Lehman brothers.

Save your money. I didn't work for any of those organisations. I have an ordinary Economics degree. The reason why property markets are failing is simple: they're designed to function on cheap energy, and on the premise that these developments can connect to other urban centres via cheap energy conduits. I have echoed other voices who have spoken sensibly about alarming trends we have been seeing, trends that demonstrate suburbia's 70 year run is over. The likes of Robert T. Kiyosaki who have preached a gospel of borrowing money to buy property to grow rich quick were accurate until now. The world is changed. If you don't own property you should be renting. If you you do own property, good for you. If you have just bought property, or owe substantial sums on property, God help you.

It's no mystery why the world can no longer function on borrowing from the future (credit cards etc). Oil is like an endowment policy that we have used up in our lifetime, leaving nothing for the future. It's like a credit card that allowed us far more wealth and convenience than we should ever have been entitled to. Oil should be used for medicine and pesticides and fertilizers. Instead, we drive out the stuff on a weekend away as though there were lots more, more for our children. No. No more. Our middle class children may share our sense of entitlement (for cars and stuff). They unfortunately will be the first generation after three or four to have to do without cars. They will have to make do with iPods and XBoxes, and even these will probably be luxuries no one can afford. We will probably be working on farms, growing things, and finding it harder to do so at new scales and without resources than previous farmers operating on a giant-scale once did. Probably though, while we'll be working physically harder, we might conceivably be happier - families, friends and strangers working together all day in the field and all that.

The trends in energy that we're seeing are exceptional. The planet's two giant countries, India and China (both large land masses, both billion plus populations) are attempting to come online. Hence the limits to our energy abilities are being felt. Unfortunately, a lot of people respond dismissively by saying that this has happened before (meaning, it's not serious, meaning we don't need any decisive response). All those people unfortunately are wrong. And the unfortunate result of our collective sleepwalk towards the future, is that the poor and vulnerable suffer first. Meaning, despite the number of casualties rising we - the middle class - don't even notice. We hear it on the news, but it is still invisible (not real) to us.

On the news tonight there are reports of pets being abandoned in large numbers right across South Africa because their owners can't look after them. The SPCA is overwhelmed with animals being brought to them, sometimes 40 to a single shelter on a single day. Ordinary people no longer have the disposable income to buy cat and dog food. I pity those poor animals, holed up in cages. They're innocent of this conundrum, but like the children that once kept them, they aren't immune.

And so while beautiful young girls smile beatifically in gyms and pubs, there is a nasty unseen flipside to these happy pictures of supposed wellness. 2 ATM's are blown up every day in South Africa, a crime that itself has skyrocketed 3000% in 3 years. Ought we really to be smiling and encouragin each other to be positive? Or should we graduate to a more grim and deliberate response? I'm not advocating that we lose our sense of humor, or that we grit our teeth, at the very least I'm advocating that we simply accept reality for what it is, and begin to develop personal game plans that are integrated with reality. In other words, that we start accepting reality and making our mindset (and thus conversation and consumption) a reflection of this. In short, quit pretending everything's cool.

The view from my bicycle is of a darkness that is spreading, and the shadowy creep is unseen by the powers that be, unfelt by the consumers that drive these processes (excess demand, pollution and the markets). Once The Dark Night knocks on the doors of the suburbs it will be too late. Meanwhile, Antarctic ice is melting (yes, during its own winter).

Antarctic ice shelf collapse 'imminent'

This is a tipping point event, one that Al Gore mentioned as a crucial feedback mechanism which, once affected, would critically accelerate our problems.

It is interesting to observe the sheer number of troubles we are faced with. All are lost in the foam of news and entertainment noise. It is like shopping at a supermarket. You tend to try to avoid all the signs, all the adveritising boards, and yet when you look for what you want, the sign is right in front of you. Collectively we are suffering from this audio-visual blindness. As such, probably what we need for a collective wake-up is for a collective systems crash. This may be imminent too when stock markets convulse on successively high energy prices.

The message I have tried to convey as essentially been twofold: Know and understand how things are deteriorating. And second, knowing this, let's respond and adapt while many systems still function and when we can at least depend on systems that function, and basic civilian order. That window, I'm sad to say, is now closing. Few people are even prepared at this point to accept the first message as true (and urgent), let alone the second. The reason is, nobody knows what is real anymore.

What is real?

It is hard to predict where our troubles end. Probably that is a pointless train of thought anyway. Instead we ought to be focused on resilience. And resilience resides in adaptability. Change is likely to be rapid, and we will need to change and adapt quickly too. We will in the future be struggling not only to survive without work and with greater and greater municipal and governmental failure in South Africa, but increasingly, we will be vulnerable to ordinary criminality from those around us as well as something as ordinary as the weather. The weather will increasingly determine not just energy prices (and thus who gets to hold onto their homes for another season or not) but also food prices (who gets to eat, and live, or not).

While it is easy to imagine that these are threats posed to Ethiopia or some other continental backwater, that will change in the months ahead. Yes, it's that soon ladies and gentlemen. Are we going to wait until Christmas to face this shitstorm? These distant threats (climate change, food and oil crisis) are coming home to roost, this season. The trouble is accelerating. I don't expect anyone to believe me, but I am calling for a response right now. Let's start. I think when airlines disappear entirely the penny will begin to drop. More of us will be taking the bus on those long trips we like to take. But we don't have to wait until then to begin to construct our own paradigms of resilience. Take leave, go on those trips now.

While there may be shortages and dangers in many areas, what we don't suffer from is a shortage of ideas, and opportunities remain. I am not saying we will solve the crisis headed towards us. I am saying we might survive it better than we think, and our chances improve the sooner we take action. How we start to change and adapt is when we ask ourselves:

Do you always play by the rules?

By this I mean, just because everyone else is operating on false assumptions, doesn't mean we have to. And that is a personal choice that I leave to you.
People, I know, will surprise us not only in how mean they can be, but also in the magic that sparks under their skins and behind their eyes. We are capable of so much more, and we know this. At least, that's the view from my bicycle.

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