15 Pieces of Advice for an Uncertain Future

These are heavy, heavy times for those who have opened the Pandora's Box of awareness. I could not begin to describe to you the emotions I experience every day as a result of my research about the future.

I'm not going to spell out the details here of why I have reached that position. This piece is for those who have made some progress in educating themselves about peak oil, energy scarcity, and the behavior of the power elite. Note that I do not profess to have attained all the below myself or that I am 100% correct in my assertions.

1. Educate yourself about peak oil and its ramifications for our civilization.

2. Move out of LA, Las Vegas, and other big cities. In the likely scenario of an imminent long-term energy crisis, those energy-dependent places will probably become dangerous and unstable places to live.

3. Wean yourself as soon as possible off of corporate technologies, such as cellphones and the internet.

4. Acquire basic skills, suitable for a powered-down future, such as food-production, clothes-making, and so on.

5. Read The Transition Handbook by Rob Hopkins, the Long Emergency by James Howard Kunstler, and Endgame by Derreck Jensen.

6. All scales of government - nation, state, and city - energy-dependent administrative structures that they are, and the corporations that we are almost entirely dependent upon, are likely to begin terminal contraction and collapse in the near future. Learn to live without them.

7. Like the biological organisms that they resemble to an extent, government, corporations, and other such large institutions become dangerous in the event that they begin to lose power/life. Prepare for this scenario.

8. Learn to identify the distractions in your life and systematically eliminate them.

9. Watch less television, use the internet less. Shake off the digital haze.

10. Live in the moment, but prepare for the future.

11. Learn more about the history of national governments and how they have always treated the overseas poor and native peoples who have presented obstacles to the acquisition of power and riches.

12. Visit your neighbors now. Break the ice with some cookies. Get to know them. These simple acts may one day save your life.

13. Do whatever it takes to shake off apathy. Read books, talk to people, share your views, find the people you need to move forward. Then get to action.

14. Understand the difficulty of telling ourselves the truth about probable scenarios for the future. Know that the dominant messages promulgated by the power elites are fixated on preserving an unstable and dangerous way of life. Tell yourself the truth and work through your fear.

15. Regardless of how likely that future is, construct and embrace a realistic, educated, and positive vision of the future and begin working toward that future.

I believe that acting on some or all of the above will affect whether or not you are one of the masses running around like headless chickens, scrambling for food and water in the post-peak oil long emergency, or are someone who is prepared, smart, and part of a community that gets it.