The View from my Bicycle [COLUMN]

Surfing and protesting - by Nick van der Leek

I used to think swimming was miles away the toughest sport. By tough I mean a sport filled with misery and suffering, and come race day, your chances of losing are always scary high. So my experience over the past 4 days covering the Billabong Pro in Jeffery's Bay was something of an eye opener. Here there are plenty of variables that aren't under your control, which is what makes surfing both a humbling and a heroic sport.

I suppose you can't really compare the mindrot and the cold and the repetition that swimming is, to surfing. I don't know whether the sheer physical investment is the same, but I suspect it's close.

Those Variables

When the contest is approaching its final stages, you start to really feel those variables. How it works is the first surfer to reach a certain zone in the surf 'gets priority' which means, if a good wave approaches, he can choose to use it and the other surfer must forfeit this wave. You may think this is no big deal, but in a point break scenario such as the one at Supertubes [the world's best right hand break hands down] it means you have to make sure you catch a kicker of wave - a wave that won't drown you out after a few feet, a wave that has the sort of form and shape that will allow you to do your thing, and you have to get yourself into a position to use it when it pitches.

If you don't elect to use your priority, the other surfer you're competing against can use it. So it's not just a question of taking your chances, but also denying your competitor a chance to ride on the best wave.

Here's where it gets tricky. Supertubes over the course of the competition had sick waves, but they were sickest on day 1 and then go more and more well as the competition wore on. During the last day and the final the sets were getting thin, and so you have a scenario where one surfer catches a wave does something with it, and then the other waits with priority. Sometimes that can be an awful long wait during the 30minutes allocated to a session. Wait too long and the pressure gets enormous, and you possibly miss out, or catch something and fall trying to play catch up, go too soon and you lose priority on a wave that is simply not going to give you what you'll need.

This makes it a potentially very unfair sport, where a surfer may have the guts, the skill and the strength, but due to a confluence of circumstances, isn't there to catch a wave either because he's squeezed out due to another surfer's priority or because of catching one and while paddling back, missing a duzi.

It is heartbreaking to see the likes of Kelly Slater, 9x world champ, doing his thing and then, inexplicably, whilst on a typically extreme manoeuvre, losing his balance slightly. Being nervous on the moving platform that is the sea in front of a massive audience, whilst being expected to jump through the air, off water, back onto water, has got to be some of the trickiest competitions that are out there.

Which is why something like this is almost incomprehensible:


Protest March

On Saturday there was also a modest anti-nuke protest march. To be fair, I wasn't 100% sure what the fuss was about; I am of the opinion that we do need to make more use of non-fossil fuel based energies. That said, you do have to question why the hell would anyone choose J-Bay to build a nuclear power plant.

I am not someone who has been very politically active, which is something I suppose I have in common with many other white South Africans. Which is why I found it quite amusing the number of non-white faces at the protest march. Let's face it, whites don't know how to make a noise, or toy-toyi when it matters.

What I also found interesting was that they used the protest to gather various interest groups, so under the banner of No Nukes there was also an attempt to address other, arguably, lesser concerns. And this fosters a sense of community, shared interest, shared action, potentially shared outcomes.

It is also fascinating to see the the manifestation of activism and its impact on political leaders in situ, when, for example, a memorandum is handed over and the leader then ums and ahs and attempts to address/placate the crowd. This one was small and well behaved. One fellow wearing a DA shirt was miffed about something, but another fellow also in a DA shirt restrained him. Also interesting to see the DA's subtle behind the scenes organisation here.

At this particular march the mayor said he took the concerns of the public seriously and it all sounded very positive, but one person critically [and quite rightly] observed that while he seemed to be magnanimous and sensitive, he wasn't really saying anything at all. When? When are meetings going to be held, and of course - with a wry smile - he wasn't prepared to answer this question. It is a valuable exercise to be part of these demonstrations.

Much of J-Bays white suburbia was either sleeping or otherwise oblivious to what was happening. Fair enough, perhaps they did not elect this man as their mayor. When people see the demands their fellows are making on a leader, and they see that the leader doesn't really pander to the interests of those that elected him, these leaders must leave as soon as possible to fast track community service. In the end, money talks, and bullshit walks.

The View from my Bicycle [COLUMN]

Only a Sith Lord deals in absolutes.- Obi-Wan Kenobi, Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith

I have found being South African during this World Cup very...well, confusing.  I feel waves of celebration moving through a tide of cynicism.  There are times when I loathe what this country has become, I'm ashamed of our abysmal standards.  The problem is the people, the attitudes of the average South African. The apparently irrevocable decaying of standards. The news, every day, is full of it.  And it drains away that feel good factor.

Is the antidote to this justifiable cynicism to ignore the news?  Is it to pretend that our country is hunky dory? Is it to tell anyone that will listen that HEY, I'M PROUDLY SOUTH AFRICAN- PAAAAAAAAAAARRRP!!!
I don't believe so.  On the other hand, to maintain exposure to the constant stream of what is happening in South Africa is a recipe for depression.  So I suppose one needs a balance of awareness, of creative response, and yes, a little disconnection - to maintain one's sanity. Use those periods of disconnection from the national pscyhe to recharge your personal framework, to feel the sunshine.
In the same way that one must get away from the computer, and put to bed all the social media twitters and comments, we also must turn off the stream of news in this country, or go mad.  

Inspiration has to be real to work

South Africa has more than a fair share of criminals, pigheads, racists, more than a fair share of the corrupt, the poor, the sick, the trailer trash, the low class, the rich, the unemployed, the arrogant cubicle slaves...  Am I proud of our stadiums or cities?  No.  Am I proud of our soccer team?  So far, they performed well against Mexico, but they're not champions. Not yet.  I'm not proud, but I am engaged, and ready to enjoy and share their success.  I'm also prepared to see them lose, and that is the standard that I fear will reflect poorly on us.  Because to some extent it is justified.

Of course, on the other hand, I am encouraged by this possibility: wouldn't it be wonderful if we can inspire them to greatness, and they, us?  Because an inspired people can work miracles.  I think this is the heart of the matter - inspiration needs to be pure, needs to be honest, to work.  To be real.  I'm not sure that our inspiration is real.  I believe it's marketing schpiel, and greed, and desperation, with a bit of vuvuzela vibe to warm and fuzzify it all.

So what is this proudly South African thing then? It's a marketing schpiel. And the mobs have taken to it like sheep to a border collie.  If someone from Iraq told you they were proudly Iraqi, you'd find it slightly amusing, because you'd have zero reference.  What would being proudly Iraqi mean to you? I wonder what Americans and the French and other nations think when they hear us telling each other how proud we are, knowing what they must know, knowing what we know?  It's a little disingenuous to be proudly South African when we have so much to be ashamed and embarrassed about. What do the Germans, the Brazilians, the Mexicans think when we go into raptures about our team, our team drawing a match?  It says something about our standards, but it says something more.  It's a little desperate.

Missing moral compass

We can of course be proud of Nelson Mandela, we should, of course, try our best.  Mr Mandela though points towards a more fragile reality.  The man is ailing and hanging onto life in Johannesburg's Northern Suburbs. Mandela's life presents us with an era of South Africa, and once he is gone, we will be fully and finally ushered into a new era. A South Africa without moral leadership, without even the metaphor of his moral compass.  The vacuum of a South Africa without Mandela heralds, so soon, the likes of Malema.  Malema himself is chomping at the bit, to wrest this country from law and order, threatening to polarise its people and pillage its resources in that age old oh so African tradition.   How forgetful we have become, how quickly the eradication of conscience. 

Malema has gone utterly silent while the World Cup is on - but what happens when the tournament is over?  In that sense, the tournament is a blessed reprieve.  Because the aftermath is too horrible to contemplate.  So is that what this World Cup represents, much deserved, and very expensive escapism?

In South Africa we have beautiful mountains, beautiful animals, but can you really say that you're proud of our game reserves, those precious parts of the country essentially devoid of occupying South Africans, essentially empty of any cultural significance, empty of any historical association.  Which is why we love those places.  I know I do.

Having travelled a lot I have experienced the mindset other countries have of our country, and it covers a wide spectrum.  The average is what you would expect - when people hear you're a South African and see that you're white, they immediately assume you're a racist.

South Africa can learn from Korea

I experienced my first World Cup in South Korea.  South Korea is a wildly fascinating country, an incredible contrast to our own country.  It has one of the world's most homogeneous populations, all speaking one language.  They are an incredibly unified people, simultaneously reserved but also inclined to embarrassing sentimentality.  Their soapies and movies certainly demonstrate the latter.

While Koreans are impressively literate and disciplined and sophisticated and rich, Korea is one of the world's most overcrowded countries, and it's certainly one of the most polluted places I've ever lived in.  It was in Korea that I learned to appreciate our diversity - not only of landscapes but in our people.  It's difficult to convey how monotonous Seoul can be - where 99% of people look identical, skyscrapers are carbon copies, all vehicles are Korean made etc.  Yet I learned to love Korea and was wildly supportive of their team during the 2002 tournament.  Whatever criticisms you might have, Koreans are pretty well mannered in general.  They are, also, as a rule, and probably not consciously, extremely racist.  They won't employ a teacher for example, and in general, if you are overweight, or black, or ugly.

I remember when I returned from Korea I went through a honeymoon period in South Africa, loving the food, the open space, the blue skies, the high quality of life.  After about 6 months the steady flow of bad news starts to irk, the constant news stream of one atrocious crime after another, one corrupt official exposed after another.

Australia

When I visited Australia in February this year I actually confessed to an Aussie, a stranger I met in a bar, that "I am ashamed to be South African."  I said I was ashamed of the constant focus on racism, the constant crime, the constant government scandals, the miserable health and hospital system, the crumbling municipal infrastructure.  It was interesting that my confidante seemed to know all this already, and suggested I move to Australia.  I had a similar conversation several times with different Australians.  Curiously, by the end of my trip my black and white perceptions of Australia = good South Africa = bad had changed.  That month in Australia was massively uncomfortable, with most days exceeding the mid 30's degrees Celsius, and a muggy humidity followed me just about everywhere.  I longed for the fresh air and coolness of the Highveld.  I also longed for something else.  Food and accommodation that wasn't outrageously overpriced - Australia is an extremely expensive place to visit.

South Africa is a confusing place to live in.  You either love South Africa or you hate it.  You're either proudly South African or you're not.  You're either with us or you're against us.  That's the reigning psychology.  It's repeated everywhere by many people.  On Facebook, on Twitter, if you dare disagree with a choir of consentors, you're labelled either a traitor or a racist.  Sometimes it is true, people who are critical might be conservative, inflexible folk who yearn for the good old Apartheid days.  I think that probably, more often, South Africans are so busy pursuing political correctness, and so busy blowing smoke up each other's arses, that they begin to lose touch with reality, they begin to give up common sense.

The Semenya Case

Caster Semenya is a good case in point.  What to do about this athlete who is alleged to have an unfair advantage?  Some people leapt to her defense.  Why not; a poor black girl being victimised by the big bad girl.  Sexist.  Racism.  Terrible discrimination in the Big Bad World.  Actually, hysteria aside, there's a very simple test at work - does this athlete have an unfair advantage over other female athletes on a race track.  Well what would constitute an unfair advantage?  How about higher than normal levels of the male hormone testosterone?  And as it turned out, her hormone levels were three times the normal level.  Problem solved, she does have an unfair advantage.  Please note that months later, no announcement has been made.  The logic is undeniable though.  Of course one can sympathise with Semenya's plight, it's certainly isn't her fault, but is it fair?  What would be fair, would be to remove the internal testes or bring the hormones down to a 'normal' level, but in practise you would be changing the person.

At the end of the day it really ought to be up to the athletes themselves to decide what is fair.  I am inclined to think that they would consider Semenya -as she is - having an unfair advantage.
Then there is the blade runner saga, almost a rerun of the Semenya saga, is it fair to have an athlete competing against able-bodied runners...  It depends of course on whether those artiificial legs would allow Oscar Pistorius to win by a fair margin.  Imagine Pistorius in an Olympic Final.  I'm sure we'd all like to see it, and it would theoretically be fine, unless he occupied one of the top 3 positions.  Once again, that's my opinion as a competitor, and at the end of the day, it's the competitors who ought to vote, have due consideration.

What does all this have to do with South Africa?  A lot.  I am all for an inclusive society.  That means we don't have a small set of consentors with power who are happy, but the rest are miserable, taken for a ride and excluded.  It's difficult to be genuinely enthusiastic about the world cup because of some basic realities: our government and municipal services, our public transport, our security, our health services, are all in a shambles.  South Africa could have solved its housing backlog and paid for the care of hundreds of thousands of AIDS orphans with moneys siphoned off to build soccer stadiums.  But they were built, and a few stooges pocketed some extra moolah.  What does the ordinary South African get for this investment?  A breathtaking scene, a spectacle, as one enters beautifully constructed stadiums, the thrill of having thousands of visitors celebrating and apparently enjoying our country.

A nation blowing its own trumpet

The Vuvuzela I think epitomises best the loud empty blaring noise that is the ill-considered blowing of our own trumpet.  It's a good metaphor, because it is a loud, noisy, deafening, meaningless sound.  Made of plastic, it is entirely geared toward lining some company's pocket, it has zero cultural significance [other than for Coca Cola and MTN] and let's face it, it's a harmful addition to the spectacle which probably does not make it easier for most teams to play the game.  I think the mischievous approach of our national team, that the crowd blast the opponents senseless, is neither sporting nor honest nor even honorable.  I have an idea the plastic ear drum busters will be banned as soon as Bafana exit the tournament, which is likely to be during the first round.

Should the Vuvu be banned?  Once again, what do the players say?  Personally I've experienced the horn blasting right beside my ear and I'm genuinely concerned about attending a match for fear of hearing damage.  I have sensitive ears but that's me.  I realise others love the vibe, and it does provide some color.  I confess not to understand the point of blowing the Vuvuzela at games where Bafana isn't playing, especially if people from those countries are complaining.

Criticism of the Vuvuzela is warranted, just as criticism of South Africa is warranted.  Some criticism of ourselves is warranted too.  I find it disturbing this trend towards insisting on being positive when the reality is that there is a tremendous amount that needs attending to.  Of course one could also yell oneself hoarse naming all these things that ought to be fixed.

My hope during this tournament is that our exposure to this large influx of foreigners will broaden our ability to have common sense about our local situation.  It is neither as bad nor as good as many South Africans try to portray it.  And there is an alternative to the absolute view.
Do you know where thinking in absolutes come from?  From our governing belief system.  From religion, that teaches us there is right and wrong, good and bad, heaven and hell, God and the devil, night and day.  Actually, life is very seldom so simple or so easy.  You may believe in absolutes until you find you're homosexual, or wanting an abortion,or that between day and night is the twilight.  You might subscribe to absolutes until you find that between black and white, male and female, heaven and hell is the mixedupness that is the complete, the whole spectrum of reality, with it's halfbreeds, its hermaphrodites and transvestites, its ladyboys and that boring middle ground that is neither here nor there.  We may wish for comic book reality, where the extremes are colored in using opposing colors, and definite opposites.

Naturally there is some credibility in opposing views, there is truth in both views, and one must consider whether a thing is good collectively, not just for ourselves, or our exclusive happiness.  On occasion it is good to digress from a mindset, whether optimistic or pessimistic, and ask the honest question: what isn't working, and why.  That is known as critical thinking, a critical dimension to thinking in absolutes, but a dimension that creates perspective, and perspective can make all the difference in the world, especially if your world is this beautiful, cruel, unfair, unique South Africa that we call home.

The View from my Bicycle [COLUMN]

"The equivalent of at least ten schools' learners are killed every year on South African roads." - by Nick van der Leek

South Africans are pretty blase about all the infamy and skandaal that surrounds us. We brush it off as someone elses problem, or it couldn't happen to us, or we sweep it under the carpet in the name of not being a whinger, or a complainer. But using the country's roads is something we do daily, and in one way or another it affects all of us deeply.

Recently I made a trip to Bloemfontein and thought I'd save myself some moolah by avoiding the tollgates. There are three now, charging R37, R42 and R13. That's a total of R92. The road to Parys isn't bad, and in fact, Parys is worth a squizz. It's a happening little place, and it's definitely picked up a vibe. But beyond Parys towards Vredefort the road deteriorates badly and pretty soon I was ruing my decision to get off the N1. Maybe I'm saving R55, but if you hit one pothole, the road is so uniformly bad it's hard not to - it's going to cost you at least the price of a new rim, even perhaps a new tyre, more than ten times your fee at the tollgates.

At the last tollgate I headed towards Brandfort, and here you have a section of dirt road to contend with [you miss it if you get off at Windburg and follow the tar road to Brandfort]. Once through the 20-odd kilometres of dirt road you hit some really bad patches of tar. You literally have to ski left and right over the road to miss the craters. Obviously when cars pass each other in opposite directions you have to stay in your lane and take what comes. An oncoming truck hit a pothole full bore beside me and I saw those axles bend as the truck bounced, bodily - and heavily - into the air.

So in terms of severely delayed travelling time, and the clear and present danger of smashing your undercarriage at any moment in a donga - you are far better off staying on the toll road. In other words, you're really out of options.

Now I want to talk about drivers in South Africa. It may seem like excessive criticism, but once you leave the country and travel the roads in say - Australia - you realise what pigs we are on the roads here. In Australia the speed limit is a sedate 110km/h and it's heavily enforced. On a excursion to Cervantes [outside Perth] with some friends we were pulled over by a traffic patrol vehicle. Yes, pulled over. In other words, they're driving behind you, lights are on, and you're motioned to pull over. They recorded us going 97km/h in a 90km/h zone. They let us off with a warning.

Australia is a country many times larger than South Africa, so if there is any country that has a case for allowing a higher speed limit, it's there. In fact while I was in Australia I was keenly aware of road carnage wherever I went - because each accident there is a tragedy. In South Africa the speed limit is 120km/h - this in spite of sky high accident stats. You'd think with the level of discipline on our roads [aka none] we'd slow down traffic by making the speed limit more sensible. This not feasible from a policing point of view [our cops hide behind bushes rather than make their appearance clear. That way when you're not working you wouldn't know the difference]. It is also not feasible from the perspective of a lawless bunch on the highways.

The racing going on on the N1 is an everyday game, which is why it's hardly surprising that Jub Jub recently crashed into a few scholars. You see vehicles shooting along the N1 between Johannesburg and Pretoria well over the speed limit, cruising across all three lanes, often a few vehicles at the same time. It's a computer game. You see all types engaging in this ludicrous behaviour. Why? Because there is a cowboy culture here on the roads - dead bodies are wheeled quickly out of sight on our roads, and blood mopped up. The stupidity of the risks South Africans take at the level they take them beggars belief. I've seen mothers in SUV's overtaking other cars on suburban roads with speed bumps.

The attitude of South African drivers to cyclists stinks to high heaven. What is a cyclist? It's a driver riding on a bicycle, with no seat belt, and no armored shell around him. Instead of drivers being cautious around cyclists, they taunt riders by narrowly missing them as they drive way. If you have a competition between a cyclist and a car, 100% of the time the cyclist will lose, and probably his life too. Any driver of a car who thinks this is a game, thinks it's a fair competition, ought to consider that one day their puppy or cat or young child wonders onto a road - where it isn't supposed to be. Should the attitude of drivers be: you shouldn't be on my road so I am just going to drive over you. And kill a child? Or a dog or cat?

As soon as you get into a car you literally have other people's lives - and your own - in your own hands. Treat that responsibility with respect, not contempt, not arrogance. Drive slower, drive carefully, because if you make a mistake, you will pay dearly for it or someone else will. Is someone's life really worth an ego boost? Is yours?

Do you know anyone who has died, or been seriously injured in a car accident? Or are you a victim? Chances are that you do. I personally had my knee sliced open in a car accident. An ex-girlfriend had one side of her face torn away, and almost lost her eye. Let's remember that driving a car is simply about getting from one place to another. It shouldn't leave people permanently scarred or damaged. Driving is a privilege, not a right, although many of us seem to feel entitled to both cars, use of the road, and the way we want to use it. What we put into our cars is precious - the passengers, and fossil fuels. The car itself is a valuable tool. Treat it as though your life and the lives of others depends on it - because, of course, it does.

SA roads most dangerous in the world - AA
Bakkie hits cyclists, killing 3
Top South African female cyclist killed in accident

The View from my Bicycle [COLUMN]

It's a miracle - by Nick van der Leek

Some weeks ago whilst cycling I witnessed a horrific bicycle crash, and probably one of the most disturbing scenes I've seen in my life - period. It was a freak accident on a random Tuesday morning. The guy - someone I know from the Free State - stood on his bike, pedal slipped out and he hit the tar face first at 50km/h. The result was a bloody pulpy mess. He remained absolutely motionless for about 3 minutes after which his breathing was very laborious.

When the ambulance took him away I privately didn't give him much chance of living. But he did survive, despite a broken nose, broken jaw, splintering to various parts of the skull [including his eye socket] and some bruising to his brain. He was in an induced coma for several days. Doctors, I later heard, did not want to inform his wife that he had probably suffered permanent brain damage.

Two or three days ago I received a phone call. From him - the rider who had crashed. He spoke with a very slight slur - possibly due to pain in the mouth, possibly due to injuries around the brain. When he called and I saw who it was calling, I half expected it to be his wife. It was amazing to be speaking to him, and him describing the accident, and talking about cycling again, when we had all but written off his chances. One rider who had seen his injuries up close and personal had told us afterwards: "He's fucked."

Of course, he isn't fucked. After a few weeks on a ventilator, after time for injuries to stabilise, his body had slowly begun to heal. As I say, the body lying on the highway, with a mass of blood below his face, struggling to breathe [a sort of snorting noise] - it was hard to believe he'd have remained alive for much longer. But give a person a chance and amazing things can happen.

What I think this anecdote suggests is the remarkable capacity for recovery, for rejuvenation, for resurrection. Life is fragile, but every living creature today is around, and alive, because it has learned how to fight to survive, and won that fight. The journey this rider took, from the brink of death, not being able to breathe on his own, to being able to call me - that is some turnaround. It is, in my opinion, a metaphor for evolution.

Christians will stridently argue with this, and the rider too - saying it was through prayer and thanks to God that he has healed. I don't doubt that prayer helps. Or that a Christian community can help establish and nurture personal well being. I know Ryk Neething's sister Elsje certainly can't conceive that her survival - despite tumors on her brain - wasn't due to some supernatural intervention [aka from God]. Her healing may be supernatural, but it's doubtful God took a personal interest in her. In any event, despite her good fortune, Elsje smokes. This is hardly the sort of activity you associate with a cancer survivor, or a tumor survivor, or with a believer. My point is that these beliefs are often convenient - because if God has saved you, then you're released on your own recognisance and are effectively free to do whatever you want to do again - behaviours that might cause these effects to start off with.

I don't decry believing in something, and I believe that a spiritual quality is very important. I worry though about the extreme. Even in AVATAR the religiousness of the Na'Vi has them describe the Skypeople as demons. Sometimes the label is a restrictive concept that evokes more fear than it should. Perhaps it is useful because it is effective and doesn't require explanation. When we forgo our need for explanation - I fear - we invoke plenty of troubles for ourselves. For we live in a subtle universe, where things may be more complex than the labels we give them.

We human beings think that we know something if we know its name - if we give it a name. Really? Even our definition of God is an arrogant one - because it really cannot be defined, and it certainly cannot be defined in a way that everyone can agree upon. And yet since there is a label, that appears sufficient - to Christians - that there is a God. Definitions of God run the spectrum, don't they - from the most vague, to the most specific - whatever works. Definition be damned.

I've been reading Richard Dawkins book on evolution, which is really to help pantheists like myself, and agnostics, to counter the strident but ridiculous arguments - if they can be called arguments - that Christians make. One argument is that, they say, the world is 6000 - 10000 years old. This is simply as incorrect as saying the world is flat. Yes, it may appear flat to the naked eye, but not enough research has been done. A wider context must be sought, a broader view.

I have discovered that Christians are obstinately ignorant when it comes to these debates. They will not respond to certain points, they simply ignore them. They will repeat denials or questions with the same gusto as someone repeating quotes from the bible - in other words, they're responding to their own programming, there isn't any real thinking involved.

Evolution is a fact, and the science - the fossil records - are fascinating, and quite vast. Some areas of interest are the migration of ocean creatures to land, and back to the sea, and in some cases, back again. The tortoise is an example of such a creature. Sea-based, then land-based, then sea/water-based again and finally both land and sea creatures.

Dawkins expresses it very coherently - he has obviously taken time to think about it - that one species cannot evolve into another species, but two species can share a common ancestor. He says, for example that:

Trout and tuna are closer cousins to humans than they are to sharks...and lungfish and coelacanths are closer cousins to humans than they are to trout and tuna...vertebrates whose ancestors never ventured on to land all look like 'fish', they all swim like fish [unlike dolphins, which swim with an up-and-down bending of the spine instead of side to side like the fish.]

When you consider a human being in fish form you do think more of a dolphin, and dolphin like movements [such as kicking]. Creationists get stuck because they expect to see intermediaries everywhere, as in a whole library of intermediaries between dolphins and man. Er...they expect all these intermediaries to be alive, with us, right now. Because apparently with creationists seeing is believing. Fossils are discounted for that very reason. All the intermediaries, and more than many care to reference - are right there, in the fossil record. The dog to horse intermediaries, the intermediaries of man, and fish to tortoise.

When you fall off your bicycle and nearly die, you can credit your recovery to God. It shows a sense of gratitude and humility which is, I think, necessary and important. And a sense of the spiritual, the underlying nature of thing. However, since God doesn't exist, we need to credit something else. Something in our genes, something we have inherited - the potent survival mechanisms. In a sense calling all of that God may make some sort of sense. If you like labels. Everyone can read and understand labels, but most labels come with bar codes or fine print. So does the God label. It comes with Jesus or Islam and then a lot of subtext which is arguably not helpful, not scientific and certainly not very intelligent.

Some intelligent people believe the world is less than 10 000 years old. They do because they try to fit reality into what they want to believe.

Prof. Gershon Galil of the Department of Biblical Studies at the University of Haifa recently deciphered an inscription dating from the 10th century BCE, and showed that it was a Hebrew inscription, making it the earliest known Hebrew writing.

This breakthrough indicates that at least some of the scriptures were composed hundreds of years before the dates previously believed, and that the Kingdom of Israel already existed at that time. The 10th century BCE was the period of King David's reign.

In the world today that schizophrenia is very evident. We try to fit the real world, reality, into what we want to believe. The number of ultra-heinous crimes, from rape to murder to the worst serial killings, have been perpetrated, licensed really, in the name of some sort of religious doctrine. This applies to Christianity and Islam.

Trying to fit reality into your modus operandi, that is, your own belief system - and let's face it, religion is really a license to take those beliefs to a literal extreme - that game is up. In 2010 we'll see some of these beliefs wash like ships onto beaches, to be wrecked along rocky shorelines as reality closes in. And reality is closing in. The time has come to change, to adapt, to progress to something higher and harder than what we've been used to. Time to wake up.

The View from my Bicycle [COLUMN]

Excess

During yesterday's drive to Johannesburg in pouring rain my rear view window was filled with a snaking white diamond. Cars returning to work stretched as far as the eye could see. It didn't matter if you drove faster or slower, the line went on and on. Of course, we consider it normal to be able to have a car and drive wherever we want to. We consider it a right. That may be, but roads only have so much capacity. More and more people driving more and more cars, and are they going to be building more and more roads? I don't think so. In fact the roads I see are deteriorating. This is an international trend too.

Global finance is a lot like the world's roadways. It's filling up with potholes. Entire countries - yes - face bankruptcy.

...sovereign default looms in Greece, the Baltic nations (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania), the Balkan nations (Serbia, et al), Spain, Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Iceland and the former soviet bloc of Eastern Europe. England is a train wreck of its own (though not tied into the Euro), and even France may be in trouble. That leaves very few European nations standing. Namely Germany and Scandanavia (and I just plain don't know about Austria). What will Europe do?

Meanwhile in Dubai, the world's tallest building has just been unveiled.
How is this for an ironic opening paragraph to the article:

Dubai was preparing Sunday to inaugurate the world's tallest tower, a symbol of the Gulf emirate's unbridled ambitions, amid ongoing fears about a financial catastrophe.

The article goes on to say that since the bulk of Dubai's population are expats, and many of them have abandoned Dubai, there is a massive oversupply of real estate. But Dubai won't sink into the sand. Oh?

"As oil prices remain at these levels and the global economy recovers, the situation of the whole region is on a growth recovery path -- a plus for Dubai."

There is a big white elephant called IF, and the if relates to oil prices. If oil prices remain at current levels... Thing is...they won't.

Peak Oil is still out there, very much out there, a huge unseen presence in the story, the true ghost-in-the-machine, eating away at economies every day. It slipped offstage in 2009 after the oil spike of 2008 ($147/barrel) over-corrected in early 2009 to the low $30s/barrel. Now it's retraced about halfway back to the mid-$70s. One way of looking at the situation is as follows. Oil priced above $75 begins to squeeze the US economy; oil priced over $85 tends to crush the US economy. You can see where we are now with oil prices closing on Christmas Eve at $78/barrel.

Even with somewhat lower oil prices in 2009, the airlines still hemorrhaged losses in the billions, and if the oil price remains in the current zone some of them will fall back into bankruptcy in 2010. Oil prices may go down again in response to crippled economies, but then so will passengers looking to fly anywhere, especially the business fliers that the airlines have depended on to fill the higher-priced seats. I believe United will be the first one to go down in 2010, a hateful moron of a company that deserves to die.

My forecast for oil prices this year is extreme volatility. A strengthening dollar might send oil prices down (though that relationship has temporarily broken down this December as both oil prices and the dollar went up in tandem for the first time in memory). So could the cratering of the stock markets, or a general apprehension of a floundering economy. But the oil export situation also means there is less and less wiggle room every month for supply to keep pace with demand, even in struggling economies if they are dependent on foreign imports. Another part of the story that we don't pay attention to is the potential for oil scarcities, shortages, and hoarding. We may see the reemergence of those trends in 2010 for the first times since 1979.

Read Jim's full forecast for 2010 here.

Geopolitically things are looking tinderboxy between Iran and The West, and it's hard to imagine we'll come out the other side of 2010 without a military escalation against Iran. If that happens, expect a broadening conflict.

Swine flu - well, currently around 14 500 are dead, and the pandemic isn't on the radar of most people. I predict that in 2010 swine flu will come creeping back. In the same way we thought energy problems were behind us, in the same way we think we can sweep climate change issues out the back door - we think we can continue on as though nothing is wrong. Sorry, we can't. Life isn't a commercial, life isn't spin, life isn't a one-liner. It's reality.

Speaking of which - I spent a week in Bloemfontein recently. I stayed in a pleasant enough home. But upon closer inspection you notice the antiques, and the books of antiques. You notice around four or five cabinets stocked with tea sets. Paintings, urgly pieces of crap, covering almost every open square foot of wall. The entire house is crammed fill of green glassy objects and other apparently valuable junk. It's not hard to come away from that place with a sense that one [or both] of the owners are a little Koo koo. What on earth are going doing with four cabinets filled with teacups? Will you ever serve that much tea in an afternoon?

Other people are given to other extremes, other excesses. It might be a different form of clutter; it might be a zoo of animals who defecate on the living room floor. It might be a lazy attitude to time. Permanently engaged in computer games, or porn, or writing. Essentially then, doing a lot of inconsequential stuff.

What do we need to be doing?

We're in desperate need of decomplexifying, re-localizing, downscaling, and re-humanizing American life. - JK

Substitute the word 'American' for the country you're living in. What can we do though as individuals about who we are; and how we organise ourselves?

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. I don't think that we'll be living in a world without money, some medium of exchange above barter, but it may not come in the form of dollars. My guess is that for a while it may be gold and silver, or possibly certificates issued by bank-like institutions representing gold-on-hand. In any case, I doubt we'll arrive there this year. This is more likely to be the year of grand monetary disorders and continued shocking economic contraction.

Like Jim Kunstler I see tremendous prospects in 2010 for disorder. Systemic disorder as many of our systems go wobbly. But also another kind of disorder. Ordinary civilian disorder - manifesting as disruptions, strikes, crime, and yes, war.

The recent Blockbuster AVATAR says it very well. We have killed our Mother. Everything we seem to do we seem to destroy. If we cannot become part of this world, and see ourselves as part of a unified organism, then we will become apart of this world. The Bible tells us to be fruitful and multiply, to subdue the Earth and all creatures on it. That's been interpreted lately to mean CONSUME. It's our God-given right. Except we know - all of us - perfectly well that that is not right, and not sustainable. Question is, do we respect ourselves and our environment enough to change or do we learn our lesson the old way. Fight and kill and war? Because let's be clear - war brings about a lot of the changes that need to happen also, including an almost instantaneous contraction of the number of our species. It's your choice, and mine. In 2010, we'll see the fruits of our choices laid bare.

The View from my Bicycle [COLUMN]

People wanted to believe what they wanted to believe - by Nick van der Leek

Last year around this time I was working through the festive season, and there was the customary exodus of colleagues going on holiday, and leaving with a cheery: 'Merry Christmas and Happy New Year'. One of them, a fella called Dave, made this contemporary advocation. I stopped and contradicted him. I said, 'Given what we know so far, we ought to expect 2009 to be a very tough year.' He shot back that I was being 'negative' and 'pessimistic'. To be fair, I get that a lot. But Dave had just gotten married, so expecting a good 2009 had probably formed part and parcel of his marital vows. But my response to being criticised for reminding folks of reality is this:

When you're tough on yourself, life is going to be infinitely easier on you.- Zig Ziglar

In my opinion we are not particularly tough on ourselves or each other. The world is slack, overweight, lazy. We're still in a sort've party mode. Our entertainments, on a daily basis, fuel this feel-good-fiesta. The press-button-lifestyle and easy-motoring culture reinforces that concept that to live like kings, nay gods, is normal. It may have some guise or normality, but to believe that this can continue for much longer is either moronic or suicidal, or both.

Of course, the contemporary mindset is something between these themes of lunacy and insanity. You have the US President visiting Copenhagen and blathering about actions speaking louder than words, only to return with no commitments, other than some sort of non-legally binding poetry. I wonder whether the president felt something writhe, like Cameron's alien, in his belly, as he flew home to another one of those freakish winter storms. As his plane was buffeted, did he feel a sense of irony - and let's be clear, dread?

At the time of writing Eurostar, which transports 25 000 passengers daily by rail has been put on ice - indefinitely. The problem, as cited by the New York Times, is, well, unusually cold weather:

The unusual temperatures on the French side of the tunnel were part of wintry weather that stretched across Europe, killing 15 people in Poland and leading to cancellations at airports in several countries, The Associated Press reported.

The Telegraph expands on the problem:

A Eurostar spokesman said screens and shields fitted to the trains to stop snow getting into the electrics had failed and needed to be improved after the “acute” wintry conditions in northern France caused snow to build up underneath the trains.

One of the things we can expect in 2010, for the next decade in fact, is an acceleration in troubles relating to our attempts to do business as usual while the environment - climate being one aspect - deteriorates, or simply changes, often with unexpected consequences.

The number one problem facing us - human beings - in 2010 isn't a financial crisis, or climate change, or an exotic flu pandemic, or an energy conundrum. The problem is us. We're deep in denial. Two icons provide us ample evidence of this. One is Michael Jackson. Michael evolved over many years into a creepy, freakish mutant version of his former self. But what Michael and Tiger have in common is the scale and scope of their dishonesty - to themselves and to us. And here's the rub. Everyone fell for it. The news media, corporate interests, and the fanbase.

Writing for the New York Times, in an article describing Tiger Woods as The Person of the Year, Frank Rich posits: We’ve rarely questioned our assumption that 9/11, “the day that changed everything,” was the decade’s defining event. But in retrospect it may not have been. A con like Tiger’s may be more typical of our time than a one-off domestic terrorist attack, however devastating...What’s striking instead is the exceptional, Enron-sized gap between this golfer’s public image as a paragon of businesslike discipline and focus and the maniacally reckless life we now know he led. What’s equally striking, if not shocking, is that the American establishment and news media — all of it, not just golf writers or celebrity tabloids — fell for the Woods myth as hard as any fan and actively helped sustain and enhance it.

The theme of the Woods parable is a chronic addiction to falsehood. It is myself-uber-alles. It is telling the press 'family is the most important thing' and exuberantly living out the opposite. Woods capacity for lying to himself and deceiving others is shared by the mainstream media, who haven't sniffed out a real story for some time. They haven't seen the financial shitstorm coming [instead they deny we're in trouble even some time after the wave hits, with a resistance to using the R-is-for-Recession that borders on obsessed. Of course, every excuse is used to write R-is-for-Recovery. Why? Because believing something, it seems, can make it happen. Believing and being positive can make us rich. And getting others to buy into our bullshit reinforces this cycle of delusional - and temporary wealth].
The news media weren't able to call Bush's WMD hyped invasion of Iraq exactly what it was - a misstep.

Right now, the news media are still mixed up about our energy prospects. In fact I find the media to be very schizophrenic in their coverage. The South African media have knocked the virtuous INVICTUS for being too Hollywood. Really? A story about strong, and moral leadership, is described by Carlos Amato as a plodding, patronising affair - a clumsy Hollywood knock-on, excruciatingly unconvincing. It beggars belief that our own reviewers are this cynical. Three Oscar Winning big hitters have bothered to tell a South African story to an American audience, and all Amato can do is bitch about whether the accents were good enough for him?
Then there are comments about AVATAR being about white guilt. These responses to two very altruistic cinema experiences demonstrate a sickened human system that can never be satisfied.

The Pet Shop Boys have a song with these lyrics:
Too much of anything
Is never enough
Too much of everything
Is never enough

You need more
Than the Gerhard Richter hangin’ on your wall
A chauffeur-driven limousine on call

There's a little more insight into climate change, but it's come very late, and arguably, if it had come sooner, in a sustained pattern, world leaders would have been mandated by expectation to deliver. How long ago were we reading reports in the mainstream media calling climate change a theory? Mere months ago. By lying to ourselves that climate isn't happening, we don't have to do anything about it, and we can continue having our party.

Of course, any dishonest pattern eventually unravels. Nature it is said, abhors a vacuum, and reality speaks better than any man. Reality has started clearing it's throat. You can complain that reality is negative, or pessimistic, if you want to make yourself look and sound stupid.

As I've said, the problem, fundamentally, isn't climate change, or pandemic disease, or energy. It's us. We have to exceed our own expectations for ourselves. We have to be something more, nay, something other than consumers.

I'd suggest: conservers. Our prospects can only begin to improve when we acknowledge reality. When it is culturally acceptable to hold ourselves accountable to news and views that don't enhance our salaries. Sometimes it's in someones interests to claim that smoking doesn't cause cancer. Sometimes we can't prove these things beyond a shadow of a doubt. The same is true right now with cellphones causing tumors.

This is where common sense comes in, and part of common sense is making the choice to be honest with ourselves. When we are, we begin to do things that enhance not only our lives, but the prospects of our companions. This is the message of AVATAR. That we reconnect ourselves to the world. The real world. In 2010 those reconnections will be painful, like the first labour pains. Whether we choose to resist the New Life that is in store, or to accept it, know this: the contractions have already started.

The View from my Bicycle [COLUMN]

A fraudulent society - by Nick van der Leek

What do I mean by that? What is a fraudulent society? Well it is a large number of individuals who are individually and collectively corrupt, collectively caught up in a cycle of counterfeiting and artifice. What do I mean?

It means the entirety of our values are seated in money. It means we lack a sense of continuity, cohesion or conscience. These lacks will lead, finally and ultimately, to societal collapse. Don't believe me?

Well let's take two icons of our time. Michael Jackson and Tiger Woods. Michael Jackson's dalliances with little boys seems not to matter as long as we remember he made beautiful music. Really? So there's one rule for child molesters and another for rich, grotesquely self-indulgent child molesters. If a child molester makes us feel good - with nice songs - we hold them to a different standard. Really?

Tiger Woods is a different animal to Jackson. A man representing discipline and poise. He is a different kind of fraud. A man who to his own wife represented an entire counterfeit charade.

James Moore of The Huffington Post summarises Tiger's betrayal perfectly:

Nothing Tiger might have done could have more deeply harmed his wife because she now sees her entire existence in his world as a fraud. How does he fix that? Who has that much forgiveness?

The people who suggest, as did Jack Nicklaus, that this is "none of our business," are terribly mistaken. In fact, Nicklaus is one of the many people who turned Tiger into our business. Nicklaus anointed him as a player with almost inhuman skills. Golf wanted all of us to make Tiger our business because it was good for golf's business. The sports fans are justified in feeling as though they, too, are victims of a betrayal.

Some people say that Tiger's philandering - with pornstars and what not - doesn't matter. Among these people are Tiger's sponsors, notably Nike, who still stand by him. In Tiger himself we see a noticeable schizophrenia. A man presenting one image to his wife, and fans, and then another Tiger. Moore describes it thus:

His behavior appears pathological and suggests he psychologically compartmentalized his world into a road version and a home edition.

At the heart of this attitude is one simple thing: ARROGANCE. And if there is one thing that breeds arrogance, it is money - having too much of it, and being worshipped for that.

It is against this background that two powerful stories have penetrated our public consciousness. One is INVICTUS and the other, James Cameron's AVATAR. I've been dismissive in the past about movies, and fiction in general. But I've had a change of heart. Sometimes there is little or no inspiration in reality. It is then that we must find inspiration in the works - sometimes the mere words, ideas, hopes - of others.

In INVICTUS Mandela says something that is extraordinary powerful: To build a nation each of us must exceed our own expectations of ourselves. The opposite, is a fraudulent society - with low standards for itself, its leaders, its models. A fraudulent society places value in one thing - what it wants for itself, whether or not this translates to a good thing collectively. Today that one thing tends to be money. The way to raise our game comes down to each person, you, me and those around us, raising our expectations for ourselves first, rather than judging and blaming others first. If Mandela can forgive the gross injustice of 27 years in jail, perhaps we can exceed our expectations of ourselves in terms of forgiving those not like us who we feel transgress against us. Isn't this the least we can do?

AVATAR presents a more visionary look at the human heart. It presents a young warrior, played by Sam Worthington, in a basic situation. He is a pawn, essentially, with science on one side [with all its informed insights, affirmations and environmental concerns] and corporate interests on the other. Greed is immediate - Sully [Worthington] is offered the gift of 'new legs' [he's a paraplegic] in exchange for the aggressive and loyal pursuit of these vaunted corporate interests.

AVATAR goes further than most Hollywood fodder by politicising the process, and having Sully question the legitimacy of his mission. Sully becomes, in essence, a revolutionary.

“When people are sitting on stuff you want, you make them your enemy”.
By the same token, when it enriches you not to know something - to deny something - what do people do? When it enriches you to believe something that may not be true - what do people do?

An article in WIRED sums up our common denialism succinctly:

...climate change has an added aspect that is very important. The scientists who built nuclear bombs felt guilt about what they did. Now the guilt is real for the broader public.
Wired.com: Why don’t people seem to care?
Kari Norgaard:On the one hand, there have been extremely well-organized, well-funded climate-skeptic campaigns. Those are backed by Exxon Mobil in particular, and the same PR firms who helped the tobacco industry (.pdf) deny the link between cancer and smoking are involved with magnifying doubt around climate change.

Climate change is disturbing. It’s something we don’t want to think about. So what we do in our everyday lives is create a world where it’s not there, and keep it distant.

For relatively privileged people like myself, we don’t have to see the impact in everyday life. I can read about different flood regimes in Bangladesh, or people in the Maldives losing their islands to sea level rise, or highways in Alaska that are altered as permafrost changes. But that’s not my life. We have a vast capacity for this.

To be explicit, Norgaard is saying we have a vast capacity for denial, for fooling ourselves, in effect to bullshit others and be bullshitters ourselves. How can we as individuals break out of this destructive and delusional pattern?

Image above of a Norwegian farmer who built these windmills on his own farm.

By being true to our gut-instincts. By challenging ourselves in constructive ways. By associating with people who think critically [as opposed to cynics, or perpetual optimists/doomsayers].

At a basic level we're combating our own doubts and fears. So what to do? Confess your lack of self belief, look for factual proof for why you believe what you believe. Apologise to yourself for those self doubts and limiting, controlling self beliefs that you've allowed to reign and ruin inside yourself. Forgive yourself - this frees you to forgive others, and liberates your real self beliefs. Finally, develop a sense of gratitude. This will inspire you to want new things, and test whether you can have these things, and provide the motivation to go and do what you must do. So in summary - when you have doubts, confess them, test them, apologise when they're found to be irrational, forgive yourself and then cultivate a sense of gratitude.

You can write lists for yourself - of things you can do. Journal your emotions. But are you moved emotionally, or are you moved literally. Because therein lies all the difference. It is by our works that we can redeem ourselves. Until then, we're walking, talking, bullshitting fraudsters and we can't expect a functional world, and a functional system, if everything about it, and everything about us, is dysfunctional. So let that change start with you. Start by doing one simple thing: be honest. Then live honestly.

The View from my Bicycle [COLUMN]

The recession's over, yay, the recovery is here. Well, tell that to the six people who cancelled photo shoots in the last month. Actually, they didn't cancel, they simply fizzled. When I approached them to confirm - "Sorry, budget has disappeared."

I published an article earlier today on this blog showing Americans who stay in their homes until the absolute last minute after being foreclosed; stripping everything and reselling it to put food on the table. One homeowner was asked why he didn't leave or make arrangements to leave despite being given notice. His answer: "I couldn't believe it." It's not so much hard to believe, but difficult to accept.

While we're in a financial crisis, it turns out that the financial industry is the biggest industry in South Africa. Now think of the organism that a country is in comparison to a human body. Finance is the brain, limbs are manufacturing, the digestive system is energy [farming and fossil fuels]. Why then is South Africa's agriculture [think arms and hands] the third smallest sector? How is it sustainable to have finance bloated to the point that it is the biggest sector? I imagine a giant head swelling, sucking up the resources of the rest of the body, creating a top heavy organism with tiny hands and duck-like legs and feet. No wonder the economic apparatus is crumbling. Finance has become a parasite, I kind of Ouroboros, that eats taxpayers money to become what it is, loses it, then gets to eat more. The threat is that such a creature will consume the system because of its own appetites, rather than be the stimulus that it pretends to be. The sheer bonuses bankers pay themselves demonstrates how far removed finance is from a public service. It's a private service, with private perks, in a private playground of players.

Speaking of which, it's time to take a look at the pet snake that corporations use to inform their markets of THE WAY THINGS REALLY ARE. In South Africa, the Sunday Times uses its front page to market South Africa to South Africans, encouraging them to go and buy tickets to the Fifa World Cup. It leaves the last word in this article to quote Julius Malema, that most inclusive of South Africans, who says the youth should go out and buy tickets and welcome and protect visitors. Protect them? From what? From who? If Julius is our spokesman for everything from Caster Semenya to UFS scandals and to inviting tourists to this country, we have serious problems. The most serious is the standards we apply to leaders, which appears to be less than zero.

The media pontificates on mobile phones, the latest study showing that phones don't or couldn't cause cancers and tumors. This reminds me of similar inconclusive studies on smoking causing cancer, and studies on anthropomorphic global warming. And swine flu. In all these cases, there's a lot of noise and uncertainty - thanks to the media - with the result that nothing happens. Actually, it is quite clear what the underlying reality is, whatever the media says, people simply need to think for themselves.
And then there is swine flu. At the moment the death toll has moved beyond 11 000. Meanwhile one media report says cases are waning, another reports record infections in parts of China and California. Meanwhile, South Africa, hosting the 2010 World Cup, remains strangely immune to swine flu infections, and has done so ever since the Confed Cup.

Which brings me to my point. All of this running around by individuals to protect their own bottom lines isn't going to change. Denial is entrenched.
My advice is to begin to covertly form communities that don't need to be convinced, that can look after one another in terms of security and resources.

From TheOilDrum.com:

My circle of friends includes many professionals in the world of environmental NGOs. I have noticed something about the way they view the importance of their work and the likelihood of its success that I’d like to share.

In brief, many now admit openly that human overshoot has gone way too far and that the programs they run are like band aids when the wound calls for a tourniquet. They lament the rise of expectations for a narrowly defined version of progress that will only deepen our predicament. It now seems undeniable that structural and psychological requirements for global economic growth have much more sway than any rhetoric about sustainability.

Although the depth of despair is greater than usual, most of these thoughts are old news. However, a couple of new conversational memes have emerged. First of all, my friends are turning inwards, becoming concerned about personal and family security. Second, they are considering adopting a new strategy that plans for responses to crisis and breakdown, rather than their usual fare, which is advocating for course corrections to avoid troubles.

In these conversations, I see a parallel with what Naomi Klein discussed in her book Shock Doctrine. http://www.naomiklein.org/shock-doctrine/the-book She documents how a particular wing of neoclassical economists, based primarily out of the University of Chicago, took advantage of disasters to push through legal, policy and business agreements that would never be accepted otherwise. The take home message is that radical changes may only be possible during a crisis, and that in chaotic times the advantage goes to whoever has a response plan available.

I don’t see that these discussions have made it into any official programs of the environmental movement, but perhaps they need to be. The existing system does a great job of protecting itself and will be unlikely to change sufficiently to ahead off a crisis. If breakdowns are now inevitable, the standard role of environmental groups may be necessary but insufficient.

All of this gives rise to covert communities, also known as Mycelial organizing:

"Mycelial organizing." Mycelium runs invisible under the surface, colonizing a substrate without a sound, only emerging momentarily in a mushroom when the timing's right. This is what we need, those nameless networks of people who are already talking about the next few years and energy depletion. Oftentimes you're going to find these networks only among anarchists, outlaws, and others who reject the basic value framework of Industrial Capitalism. These are the networks of mutual aid that already exist, and these are the networks we need to continue to cultivate

If I may give praise to my local people, we've got something here called the Crop Mob (http://cropmob.org/about). It's a bunch of mostly young folks who gather once a month on a farm (usually run by one of the mobbers) to work on a big project that the usual folks merely wouldn't be able to accomplish without weeks of effort. It's fun, followed by a meal, and a great place to meet new folks while pulling weeds and mulching.

The value, I believe, of this sort of project is less in the actual work we do than in the network that's forming through this. If some kind of societal breakdown occurs, who will take up the slack? Probably those very people who are already on some level working outside the value-system of Industrial Capitalism. Food Not Bombs comes to mind as well. What else could there be? What else is already emerging in embryonic form? Foodways not Freeways?

As to plans, I don't really have any? I'm not sure what kinds of plans there could be...

Indeed. Making plans right now, when we're aware of our context, becomes very difficult indeed. But there are some actions we could be taking and should be taking to begin to gear up communities. What destroys communities? High walls, television, me-syndrome, consumerism. What builds communities? Trusting, changing, sharing, engaging, learning, teaching, helping, protecting. Trust and change are perhaps the hardest of all, but from there it ought to get easier in a world that is becoming less and less orderly.

The View from my Bicycle [COLUMN]

To most of us, honesty often means cruelty. But actually honesty and compassion are the ones in sync. - A.J. Jacobs

The cut-to-the-chase way to live

Not long ago I was sitting in my car listening to casette tapes. No, not of music, of a high level meeting. After about an hour the cabin light of the vehicle flickered and I thought, Uh-oh, battery is going flat. Sure enough, when I tried to start the car it wouldn't start.

I phoned a friend to bring along his vehicle so we could connect the batteries with my jumper leads and have his car charge mine. He arrived after 9pm, a long work day for him. Here's the funny thing. When he arrived in quite a slick sportscar he didn't know how to open the engine compartment. He'd never done it before. We spent 5 minutes looking in the car, then resorted to reading a booklet to find out where it was. We did find it, the trick was that the door had to be open in order to release it. But the point of this anecdote is to demonstrate how chronically out of touch we are, and how dependent we are in our ignorance of machines that run on fossil fuels for almost everything we do. And the irony is this friend of mine and I often have debates about the impact of energy on the economy. But he doesn't even know how to open the hood of his car? Yes, we can comfortably intellectualise about this sort of thing - but reality is what it is whether you can find the handle or not.

Radical Honesty

As such some people have come up with an antidote to fooling ourselves [aka lying to ourselves]. It's called Radical Honesty:

I will say this: One of the best parts of Radical Honesty is that I'm saving a whole lot of time. It's a cut-to-the-chase way to live. At work, I've been waiting for my boss to reply to a memo for ten days. So I write him: "I'm annoyed that you didn't respond to our memo earlier. But at the same time, I'm relieved, because then if we don't nail one of the things you want, we can blame any delays on your lack of response."

Pressing send makes me nervous -- but the e-mail works. My boss responds: "I will endeavor to respond by tomorrow. Been gone from N.Y. for two weeks." It is borderline apologetic. I can push my power with my boss further than I thought.

Later, a friend of a friend wants to meet for a meal. I tell him I don't like leaving my house. "I agree to meet some people for lunch because I fear hurting their feelings if I don't. And in this terrifying age where everyone has a blog, I don't want to offend people, because then they'd write on their blogs what an asshole I am, and it would turn up in every Google search for the rest of my life."

He writes back: "Normally, I don't really like meeting editors anyway. Makes me ill to think about it, because I'm afraid of coming off like the idiot that, deep down, I suspect I am."

That's one thing I've noticed: When I am radically honest, people become radically honest themselves. I feel my resentment fade away. I like this guy. We have a good meeting.

In fact, all my relationships can take a whole lot more truth than I expected. Consider this one: For years, I've had a chronic problem where I refer to my wife, Julie, by my sister's name, Beryl. I always catch myself midway through and pretend it didn't happen. I've never confessed to Julie. Why should I? It either means that I'm sexually attracted to my sister, which is not good. Or that I think of my wife as my sister, also not good.

But today, in the kitchen, when I have my standard mental sister-wife mix-up, I decide to tell Julie about it.

"That's strange," she says.

We talk about it. I feel unburdened, closer to my wife now that we share this quirky, slightly disturbing knowledge. I realize that by keeping it secret, I had given it way too much weight. I hope she feels the same way.

I call up Blanton one last time, to get his honest opinion about how I've done.

"I'm finishing my experiment," I say.

"You going to start lying again?" he asks.

"Hell yeah."

"Oh, shit. It didn't work."

"But I'm going to lie less than I did before."

I tell him about my confession to Julie that I sometimes want to call her Beryl. "No big deal," says Blanton. "People in other cultures have sex with their sisters all the time."

I bring up the episode about telling the editor from Rachael Ray's magazine that I tried to look down her shirt, but he sounds disappointed. "Did you tell your wife?" he asks. "That's the good part."

Finally, I describe to him how I told Julie that I didn't care to hear the end of her story about fixing her computer. Blanton asks how she responded.

"She said, 'Fuck you.' "

"That's good!" Blanton says. "I like that. That's communicating."

Read more: http://www.esquire.com/features/honesty0707-5#ixzz0YGpmESKh

Every nibble now feels like a chunk of flesh ripped out

But are the financial markets communicating? Are they representing reality?

Recently there's been the default from Dubai to the tune of $80 billion. Lloyds bank crashed over 30% on the news. The NYSE invoked Rule 48 to prevent the markets from shedding too much. So what happened? Stocks were skewered [as much as Rule 48 would permit] and then as holiday fever took hold, recovered. You may think that $100 billion isn't a lot of money, but after the fat has been trimmed off banks, these billion dollar cuts cut deep, to the bone. I believe we will still see the markets run out of hot air on this news. Monday. Oil prices have already sunk $2-3 on this news.

Why should markets be effected? Because tens of billions of dollars is no longer a drop in the financial ocean any more. With credit markets wiped out, every nibble now feels like a chunk of flesh ripped out of what remains of the world's financial spine, its central nervous system. As far as I know RBS had huge exposure to Dubai. Great news is RBS is owned by the UK taxpayer. Problem solved!

Look, each time you get $20 billion owing here and there it starts to cut to the bone, because a lot, almost all the fat has been wiped off the system.

I do understand markets. And I was broadly correct - the markets dropped then 'recovered' on the news that things weren't so bad. Abu Dabi is supposed to come to the party and bail out Dubai. That's what's rescuing the market right now. Well, the idea of it being possible.

My prediction

Don't know if you remember but I once referenced an article by Mark Mobius who was crooning over the developments in Dubai. Mobius said then that the developing world and emerging markets would 'save' the world economy. I said that building skyscrapers in the desert, Las Vegas style, is the most wasteful investment imaginable. By the way the biggest defaults in the USA are in Nevada - in the deserts states, places like Las Vegas and Phoenix. Ever ask why? Because it's really expensive. Because now those energy costs really matter.
Anyway - the US wasn't down much because everyone was on holiday, you know, like a long weekend. Thanksgiving is one of the biggest holiday weekends in the USA.

I'm going to say the same thing to you as I said to you when subprime emerged. It's going to have a serious impact. It will have an impact on commercial real estate everywhere else. Dubai may not seem like a big deal but it will be. Maybe they've understated their debts. Maybe they'll only be out of pocket for $40 or $50 billion. Imagine if the oil price falls further and their Arab brothers say, Sorry, we can't help you, then oil prices fall further, then they are even more out of pocket. Because that region needed high oil prices to finance some of those expansions. Either way shit happens. If oil prices increase inflation around the world increases and consumers foreclose go bankrupt etc. If it drops, supply decreases even more, and you have these 'emerging' projects going down.

Hidden Resentments

Why is all of this happening? Because there are hidden resentments in the world economy that we'd rather not deal with. Radical Honesty again:

In his book, Radical Honesty, Blanton advises us to start sentences with the words "I resent you for" or "I appreciate you for." So I write him back.

"I resent you for being so different in these e-mails than you were when we met. You were friendly and engaging and encouraging when we met. Now you seem to have turned judgmental and tough. I resent you for giving me the advice to break that old man's heart by telling him that his poems suck."

Blanton responds quickly. First, he doesn't like that I expressed my resentment by e-mail. I should have come to see him. "What you don't seem to get yet, A.J., is that the reason for expressing resentment directly and in person is so that you can experience in your body the sensations that occur when you express the resentment, while at the same time being in the presence of the person you resent, and so you can stay with them until the sensations arise and recede and then get back to neutral -- which is what forgiveness is."

Second, he tells me that telling the old man the truth would be compassionate, showing the "authentic caring underneath your usual intellectual bullshit and overvaluing of your critical judgment. Your lie is not useful to him. In fact, it is simply avoiding your responsibility as one human being to another. That's okay. It happens all the time. It is not a mortal sin. But don't bullshit yourself about it being kind."

He ends with this: "I don't want to spend a lot of time explaining things to you for your cute little project of playing with telling the truth if you don't have the balls to try it."

Read more: http://www.esquire.com/features/honesty0707-4#ixzz0YGtuYgQg

The solution is urban arrangements that are the exact opposite to skyscrapers in a desert

The problem is that there have been no new investments that make sense. China is doing a few good things with electric cars etc, but they're also building more coal powered plants. The net effect isn't positive. The answer, is fewer cars, more walkable communities, urban arrangements that are the exact opposite to skyscrapers in a desert. Rail and farming. No one is doing that on a scale that matters. No bailout money went into that. Nothing has changed fundamentally.

Falling energy prices spells bad news for Iran, which needs oil to be above $90 to break even on its investments. Iran is hurting.

Energy - being less abundant and more expensive - is and always will be the root cause why we can't move forward the way we're used to moving forward. Less energy = less money. For everyone.

But here's a tip. If you find that nothing is moving forward, you still can. Physically. Move your body, exercise. It is the least you can do. It is the most you can do. We need each and every healthy and sane human being right now.