When I set out to write my month’s post, the news from the Gulf of Mexico was bad. Now as I prepare to post this entry, the news has turned catastrophic. None of us can predict, with accuracy, how our hearths will fare as the crude far beneath the surface of the sea continues to gush. All sorts of nightmare scenarios play out, as ridiculous to me at the 2012 “prophecy” of the Maya. I won’t darken your day here with them. But as I look at the Scarab Beetle I keep on my writing desk, I recall the ancient Egyptian idea that the Scarab represents: good coming from evil.
The topic is so huge that I’m going to cover my thoughts on the matter over several posts. This one will focus on oil of all sorts and what it means to us and how we can begin to change our lives to use it wisely.
Oil is precious as fuel, as food, and as lubricant. Oil has always been dear to humans, be it our recently discovered and addictive petroleum, the clean-burning oil of whales that once lit our homes, or, since the dawn of history, oils derived from plants and other animals. Lard and lye make soap, after all. Though modern soaps are very different, chemically, one irony of the Deepwater Horizon blowout is that Dawn dish detergent is used to clean beaches and oil-coated animals.
To spill oil has long been considered a special form of waste. While the same could be said for the clumsy villager who spilled water coming from the community’s wells, probably only the loss of seed for next year’s planting could compare to the spilling of oil. Where my ancestors came from, not just anyone could press olives into oil, and thus the loss of this substance was a sacred violation of the hearth. One needed oil to live.
There’s little this writer, or our spiritual community, can do to stop the spill except send our energies and financial support to the humans, animals, and plants whose lives are being ruined by this disaster. If I believed in spellwork, I’d be doing so now. But even for a Deist like me, who does not believe that any God or Goddess will step in save us, there are things to do to prepare for a time when the oil stops gushing, both from the deep waters of the Gulf and from the global supply of oil. Permanent depletion of the global supply and untold economic disruption are at hand, at least within the next decade. How will each of us fare?
In retirement I plan to farm in a sustainable manner, so obviously I’ve made my plans to do what I can to help sustain a future population. Even if that never pans out as I hope it will, I think much of urban Richmond where I live will remain vibrant as it gets harder to use private cars to move about to work and shop. We are blessed with living in a walkable and bike-able community. Yet even those who can or won’t leave currently unsustainable suburban areas can do something positive.
Re-learn old skills: And while we rebuilt community that is not made through the Internet but on the sidewalks and across our fences, this is the time to learn to save seeds and propagate them, to learn “hobbies” appropriate to life after the Age of Oil ends, to study animal husbandry, to figure out who to save and reuse instead of discarding. It’s time to figure out about other oils for cooking, for lighting if the electrical grid begins to fail us as it does in developing nations, to make fuels for the few vehicles we’ll own, tending them as carefully as Cubans do their 1950s Chevrolets.
Simplify: The recent moneyless yard-sale at the First Unitarian-Universalist Church inspired me to think of how we could substitute barter and non-monetary systems of exchange for our debt-based economy. Can you trade your time cleaning, cooking, gardening, or making things for food or for another skill? Now’s the time to start considering that.
Be Loud: The voices driving the debate today are the paid consultants, the nay-saying radio hosts, the shills for the worst possible corporate citizens. They have the money and power, for now. But the end of cheap oil will hurt them more than it will hurt those who have become the creators of sustainable culture. I’m a Nietzschean at heart, and my will to power is quite strong. When America’s powerful and greedy slip and fall, we must step forward to press our most able lawmakers for justice, to use whatever media we can muster, to pressure corporate boards with our power as shareholders.
Be Silent: Choose your battles. The powerful can make changes, so they are the ones to confront and, yes, cajole. We will, however, never win over the most strident and ignorant of those who oppose the transition we are making. I try to remain silent near them.
Often they are victims of economic injustice they champion and have been convinced by demagogues to act against their own interests. Yet circumstances will move some of their hearts to see that problems such as oil depletion and global warming are real, not inventions of some socialist cabal. Some will never change, but these self-styled “rugged individuals” will not last long into an age when labor in the open air, moving on one’s two feet, and forming communities in the flesh rather than online will be the order of the day.
When all is done, and the changes that are coming have passed, or lives will be richer. Getting there will be difficult, and oil will be spilled metaphorically and literally, until we once again honor our hearths.