Humanity and life have succeeded and flourished because of the planet's bountiful resources and diverse environment. However, the stories schooled to us peddle the idea of scarcity on a finite planet. We have been told we are a brutal, discrete, isolated system in the middle of nowhere, scrambling for survival, starved of resources in short supply, where life lives its daily struggles by the ruthless turning of the Darwinian cog. In all truth, we are a species with infinite potential capable of generating abundance in peace.
Instead, artificial scarcity has been brought on by the economic wars that have competed for resources, trade routes, and control. The devastation brought on by these trade wars produces supply chain disruptions and grave shortages of food. These economies of war prevail in many parts of the Third World. The victors of these wars installed cartels that controlled the global supply of goods. The market share of this kind of commerce is beginning to change rapidly; a new design of commerce will epicenter at the local-county level. The global system is too heavy and costly to keep steamrolling the economy; we will see a reduction of the global supply. This is a good thing; this will eliminate middlemen; this will eliminate all the over-processing of our food; this will reduce the cost of shipping and refrigeration. This will spark local economies and regional markets that will be run privately by its residents. We are beings with unlimited potential and sense experience, able to thrive in the subarctic regions and in the dense tropical rain forests, able to tame the oceans and build temples in the Himalayan. We are meant to evolve, thrive, and reach our full potential here on Earth.
Our move forward will popularize de-centralization, self-reliance, food security, energy independence, and peer-to-peer exchanges in a free market where consumers vote with their wallets; these are the building blocks of the new system. In this transition, we will rekindle our agrarian heritage, where local and regional advantages ground society. Food security starts at the home level at the neighborhood level, like the Victory Gardens of World War II that sought to increase the supply and consumption of fresh vegetables and fruits. These backyard gardens were also intended to build community and improve morale. Their main thrust was to promote the self-reliance of the individual, family, and nation. The gardens also encouraged commerce of surplus for local needs. These exchanges created value; they gave Americans the utility and edge to get through the perilous times.
We are very resourceful beings even in the absence of resources and wartime. Today we have the technology to feed all of humanity without the need for transoceanic freights. What is wrong is our approach and design. We are really in the twilight of great technological innovation such as close to free energy. What can we do with that? We have the knowledge to restore and repurpose our land, to regenerate our water systems and tables, and to clean the air and atmosphere. We have the technology to green our deserts. We have the knowledge to feed humanity with highly nutritious and non-GMO organic food locally grown and distributed in CSAs and farmers markets. The center of the new design is regional governance, where locals generate free market systems. Value is created through these transactions.
Let's not forget the infinite resource that is our body-mind, with its creativity and ingenuity capable of taking us to the stars and capable of sorting out the most remote mysteries. We are an incredible resourceful species equipped with the means to thrive in synchrony with the planet. Part of what is in the way is our commoditized culture of convenience. Convenience has made us compliant and obsessed with senseless entertainment. Too much comfort and success kills your spirit. Billions of people ignited by enthusiasm, like when the victory gardens, plus all the knowledge we have accumulated, in sync with our hearts and in total pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness, will change this world wide. Its not scarcity of goods but our lazy addiction to comfort that is enabling the engineered collapse of the West.
Critical infrastructure has begun to buckle; food scarcity, supply chain collapse, medical system collapse, poisoning of the air and subsoil, homelessness, mass migration, and the global financial collapse are just a few of the symptoms of this debacle. We need a change of paradigm. What is collapsing is the old archaic system so that a new world view centered on individuals and communities raises up like the phoenix. On the other side, we will emerge resilient and able to manage the new challenges.
We need an escape hatch, an escape pod, and a lifeboat that will help us navigate this storm. In case of a flood, the utility of an ark is invaluable. The utility of a food forest has an intrinsic value that is unsurpassed in the new paradigm that is upon us. Our society has been blinded by the extrinsic value of money, caught in a drunken stupor by the frivolous things it can purchase. The real value of a 1/2-acre suburban food forest with annual vegetable beds when you compare it to the same 1/2-acre lawns that span the sprawling suburbs of America is the difference between life and death.
In the case of a total meltdown of our food supply, the city with its skyscrapers would have little utility and no intrinsic value; on the contrary, the urban areas would be breeding grounds for brutal chaos. The miles and miles of parking lots and shopping malls are also archaic monsters that have no utility if the lights go off, if corporate global trading comes to a stop. Western consumerism and its culture are caught unprepared to confront the new challenges that are ahead. This opportunity to repurpose and redesign utility into the land will trigger a renaissance of artisans in the enterprise of human endeavor. Each hub of self-reliant regions and counties will build networks of value, nodes, and transacting elements within a private sector. When the flood comes, we will not be caught unprepared and devolving into barbaric “anarchy,” but rather we will have built an armada of arks.
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