The Education of Axel Heyst

[AxelHeyst]

You can get cheaper food in the US certainly, but I should have noted a few other things:
I only buy grass fed+finished meat and as local as I can find, because the non-hippie meat situation in the US is horrific. (I was vegetarian for 4 years for this reason as well as carbon footprint, and have decided to eat meat for health and carbon reasons (grass fed+finished meat is/can be carbon sequestering)). So I spend 30-40$/mo on meat.
I only buy organic everything else. Eating food that's had poison dumped on it seems suspect to me. Even if it isn't unhealthy for my body, it seems pretty clear it's unhealthy for the ecosystem. (Yes, a lot of 'organic' food out there is basically bogus.)
I try to buy as local as possible.

So I could get my cal/$ way up in basically everything if I sought out the cheapest version of everything, but I'm not, for reasons. I've got a ways to go getting my diet aligned with values - I'm uncomfortable with the amount of grain I consume, for example, as I've never felt as healthy as when I've been borderline paleo, but that's suuuper expensive. I'm not yet as educated as I ought to be on... all this. Part of the reason for going semiERE -- so I can figure some of this stuff out!

My limited experiences in Europe (I haven't been to Germany) make me think it's less expensive to get food that isn't so messed up as it is here.

[classical_Liberal]

Nuts and seeds are paleo, no?

Acorns are edible with tannins removed, taste OK, and the ground should be littered with them in the Midwest(most of the country actually) this time of year. Eat heartily and free, just like the squirrels!

https://www.wikihow.com/Roast-Acorns

[horsewoman]

Ah yes, I was forgetting that - a typical case of fish not being aware of the water! Indeed, it is easier in Europe to get less messed up food for a reasonable price. I was very much opposed to the TTIP pact a few years back - actually Trump saved our asses here by breaking off negotiations.
There are also organic labels with clear guidelines/rules, so it is pretty easy to filter bogus organic stuff out.

[AxelHeyst]

Nuts and seeds are paleo, no?

Acorns are edible with tannins removed, taste OK, and the ground should be littered with them in the Midwest(most of the country actually) this time of year. Eat heartily and free, just like the squirrels!

https://www.wikihow.com/Roast-Acorns

Nice! Yes, my food strategy is essentially this:
Short Term/Immediately: Get my food cost as low as possible without consuming/supporting CAFO meat, dramatically unsustainable farming practices (heavy GMO, pesticides and herbicides, enormous monocrop, huge water footprint in drought-sticken areas (e.g. almonds grown in CA's central valley)), or super long supply chains (fruit from S America), and without going completely vegetarian (my body, it seems, wants *some* meat, although I don't have a good handle on how much. I could probably drop it more from what I'm doing this month.) I suspect the optimized number here within these constraints is ~$150/mo.
Long Term: Forage, garden, work-trade, Rob Greene, hunt, trap, raise animals, dive, etc to increase ratio of veggies, nuts, seeds, and ethical animal sources of calories, reduce consumption of grains and carbohydrates, while getting food cost <$100/mo. These are all activities and skills I want to engage in regardless of the cost reductions.

It's impossible to say precisely because mine and DW's food costs have been all muddled together, but this year I've probably been eating for 300-400$/mo for myself, so this month represents a 33% to 50% reduction in food costs. I'm happy with this month as a first pass at reducing food costs, it feels like I've gotten out of "red alert, mindless unnecessary overspending that you can fix with barely any effort!" mode.

[AxelHeyst]

I was very much opposed to the TTIP pact a few years back - actually Trump saved our asses here by breaking off negotiations.

You're welcome? Hey, silver linings, right? I'm very glad that died as well.

[AxelHeyst]

This dude gives me hope: https://youtu.be/UK0_ISWftpM

Built a tiny house as a high schooler for $8k (of his own money), and it looks like a $40k+ build.

[AxelHeyst]

I'm building a camper shell for my truck that will fit my motorcycle, and also let me boondock without Serenity more comfortably. I'm planning on getting some use in for this guy over the winter. One of my motivations for a more 'light-n-fast' rig is my mpg with Serenity is 11-13, and 18 without.

[AxelHeyst]

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/202 ... erica.html

https://vtdigger.org/2020/09/11/jeff-da ... of-wealth/

^This sort of stuff has been on my mind since 2010 or so. The only difference now is the tense - it all used to be "this will happen... most likely.. in N years..." One of the future career paths I toyed with as a 23yo (~2010) was "climate refugee camp designer". Maybe I should dust off those notes.

A lot of people are going through processes of grieving this year as they are faced with finally-unavoidable signs that the future they signed up for is now off the menu. I'm not, because I already did my grieving process. I already wen through my Cassandra phase, accepted reality as I saw it, started to think about how to act. It's still heavy shit for me, but my response is more of a "oh wow, so soon? I didn't expect to see you here for another couple years..."

Unlike some others around this forum, I didn't really figure out a functional personal-level response beyond "do *not* under any circumstances buy a home, anywhere", because I'm just not that smart and I used workaholism and codependence as a sort of coping/denial mechanism. Also - I was focused for many years on my professional efforts being "my solution", while only half-heartedly trying to get my personal affairs in order. I was too busy trying to save the world to work on my own resilience. I sometimes wonder if I just had a conventional job (by which I mean any job not related to sustainability) if I would have spent more effort getting my own house in order. Water under the bridge at this point.

My family has been in California/the west since the early 20th century. We were Okies of one form or another: people displaced by the depression and the dust bowl, fruit-pickers up and down the fertile valleys of the western states, or foresters making it work in the CCC in Idaho.

Part of the reason for my wanderings is the calculus always running in my mind for the past decade. "The west is going to burn and it's packed with people. Bad news bears, gotta get out. Maybe [_____]? But no, if *I* think that might be a safe haven, other people will too, so it'll probably get blown out by refugees. The trick is to find a place that's marginal, meaning, not so exposed to climate risk that it'll be literally unlivable, but not so obviously a better deal than the West that people will go there. Northern [____]? Ah but that place is a total butthole. Hmm maybe...."

The smoke from the West coast just arrived here in Michigan.

[Riggerjack]

A lot of people are going through processes of grieving this year as they are faced with finally-unavoidable signs that the future they signed up for is now off the menu. I'm not, because I already did my grieving process. I already wen through my Cassandra phase, accepted reality as I saw it, started to think about how to act.

It gets better. You are only halfway there, though.

Humanity isn't dying, it's going through a course correction. Humans are/will/will continue to die, but that's always been the case.

What course we choose will determine what we keep from our current tech and culture. But reading your journal, you were already in conflict with tech and culture. Are you really that upset that unsustainable practices will not be sustained?

We live in a wonderful time. We have all the benefits and resources of tech and culture. We have first hand knowledge of the problems created by tech and culture. And now we can choose what to keep and how.

Obviously, our current configuration has a limited future. The challenge of living today seems to be in finding more optimal configurations.

For those who were nurtured by our current system, there seems to be a lot of mourning for the future death of our current system. When you get over that, there's work to be done. When you are completely over your grief, you may find that the work is itself more rewarding than the "meaning" your old job gave.

Good luck, and stay safe.

[AxelHeyst]

Thanks Riggerjack. I’ve been ‘over’ our current system for some time - I’m not upset that unsustainable practices will die. Trying to figure out that question - what to keep and how, and finding a more optimal configuration - is where my mind is at. I’m at peace with that. I actually was sensitive to, and angry at, “the system” even before I understood climate change impacts, because I was infuriated by the injustices I uncovered everywhere I looked (inequality, racism, various forms of genocide, the whole list). And I was horrified at how ‘people like me’ benefitted from the system while it held other people over a barrel. No love lost.

Figuring out how best to survive and thrive *personally* is where most of my angst is, because there are impossible-to-predict dangers anywhere you care to look. I want to put my energy and talents to some useful purpose, and not have to expend all my energies merely surviving one catastrophe after another. So I’m trying to figure out how best to position myself to be useful, and not just another refugee needing assistance because I didn’t read the writing on the wall until too late.

Your last paragraph there is dead on, i quite agree. My previous job was a dead end of techno-Utopianism. Too little, too late. My experience there makes me concerned that I’ll get involved in something else that’s too little, too late. But the ERE path feels like the right work to be doing now, before flinging myself half-cocked in to something else. “Be the change...” and all that. Get your own house in order before offering advice to someone else.

[AxelHeyst]

It gets better. You are only halfway there, though.

Humanity isn't dying, it's going through a course correction. Humans are/will/will continue to die, but that's always been the case.

Hey actually - what? Not "what" as in, I don't get those sentences I quoted, because I do, I mean, "what" as in where are *you* coming from?

At first I thought you'd mis-pegged me as at a lower "eco-catastrophe" WL than I actually am, as I'm actually quite post-civ (or at least post-this-civ), even though I wasn't very clear about it. (Your question - "are you really that upset about the demise of unsustainable practices?" made me thing you missed something in my journal/I hadn't made my views clear, because, no, I'm not that upset about it). But that didn't seem to fully explain the apparent mis-communication, and honestly I was puzzling over it (I'm semiERE, I have time to kill).

Then I saw your post over in the CA/OR wildfires thread, and saw you mention Game B, which I've never heard of before, and it occurred to me you're just speaking from within a specific cognitive framework that I'm not familiar with. And, perhaps, since I'm not using vocabulary from that specific framework, that might explain you pegging me as still intellectually/emotionally invested in Game A.

For those who were nurtured by our current system, there seems to be a lot of mourning for the future death of our current system.

When you get over that, there's work to be done. When you are completely over your grief, you may find that the work is itself more rewarding than the "meaning" your old job gave.

But whatever, I'm not interesting in proving "where I'm at" or that I finished up my last little bit of mourning over the death of our current system in July 2018, or that the meaning I found from my old job turned to ashes in my mouth in 2015 (even though, the shrewd reader will note wryly, my ego compelled me to communicate just that point en passant) -- I'm interested in the cognitive models you're in to, because I think I've not heard of these specific ones. Five minutes on the Game B wiki was intriguing. Is it accurate that you're deep in that space? When you say "there's work to be done" - are you referring to the work outlined in the Game B wiki of sorting out an omni-win-win operating system for civilization?

[Hristo Botev]

Well, shit, there goes the afternoon going down a "Game B" rabbit hole; though 30 minutes in, still not entirely sure how this isn't just a really jargon-heavy, Ivory Tower version of ERE (or, see JMG's Long Descent, or any number of other collapsist, Peak Oil type stuff that's been around for quite some time). I mean FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, just use regular words; I've never understood this desire to take terminology from computer sciences, etc. and apply it to regular-old human social and political interactions (operating system, domain, proto, deprogram--not to mention "sense-making"?!?). Also--and sorry AH if it's intrusive of me to insert a "Game B" discussion into your journal--but if this essay is any indication as to what Game B is (https://medium.com/@memetic007/a-journe ... b13772bcf3), then this just seems like every single other utopian (why does phBB suggest I capitalize utopian?) communal vision of humanity that history and any basic knowledge of human nature tells us will never work past the first generation, or in any sort of aggregate/universal form.

ETA: At 45 minutes in, still seems like Game B is in fact everything this Wiki says it is not: https://www.gameb.wiki/index.php?title=Game_B.

EETA: Basically, everything I've read on this thing so far reads like every interview I've ever heard with Bret Weinstein, which is to say, an attempt to put into words a thing that hasn't actually yet been formulated into a thing in anyone's mind.

[AxelHeyst]

Ha, your discussions/multi-ETA posts are quite welcome here Hristo.

I spent a fair amount of time earlier in my career diving in to "civilization is screwed up, because we haven't yet applied the correct level of sophistication to the endeavor of designing civilization, so let's try to fix it using XYZ methodologies." I've basically given up on the idea (or desire for) of civilization lasting much longer, and at the moment my vision of the (mid-to-far) future has more to do with roaming bands of tribal/nomadic goat-herders, and unlike most moderns I don't say that like it's a bad thing...

But the question stands - I'd like to understand better where @riggerjack is coming from, because this Game B stuff might be a total tangent.

[Hristo Botev]

Honestly, to insert the religious for just a second: every time I hear someone talk about collapse—using whatever jargon they prefer—I see it as more proof that me teaching Sunday School is in fact really important work. Seriously, have these people not read Genesis, and specifically the stories of the Fall and of Cain/Abel? It’s the first book of the Bible! We’ve known we are screwed (and that we are doing it to ourselves, and that we can’t do much of anything about it) for a REALLY long time.

[AxelHeyst]

As someone who read the Bible a couple times and had all of genesis memorized at one point - have you read Ishmael? More specifically, the interpretation of Cain and Abel as the contact and conflict between agrarian peoples (aka proto-civilized people) and pastoral/nomadic/herder peoples (aka pre-civilized)?

[jacob]

I note that ERE was built on making the optimal "PreB" as listed under "Get yourself ready" while also succeeding in GameA. It was my experience (and I've argued this here recently as well) that joining ProtoB doesn't work because "community" is no substitute for hard skills. In terms of time-scales this is proceeding very slow. There are still very few people ready for ProtoB being too locked-into GameA. Lots of talk, but there are too few voting with their wallets and feet. That's the real problem. No way will this be nation-sized or even city-sized within 20 years. Also see Transition Towns.

Not to rain on the parade (too much) but GameB seems to offer a nice computer science friendly framework to describe the slow train wreck of systemic overshoot; not at way out of it. Or perhaps I just think this way because I'm not a community focused activist. Skimming https://www.gameb.wiki/index.php?title=Game_B I found myself nodding along. The insurmountable obstacle for this is that less than 10% have sufficient reading/comprehension to understand it. It was the same problem with ERE. A solution needs to reach at least 50% in the way religion does it. Intellectualism won't work. In that regard FIRE worked well because people worship money and freedom. However, FIRE remains "minor" because it requires an unusually low time discount factor.

One of the LTG books has a very nice graph of people's "sphere of interest" divided into time (now, tomorrow, weeks, years, a lifetime, generations) and space (personal, family, group, nation, world) suggesting that most people don't pay attention or even care until it affects them or they family in short order. Until that happens, it's as if the problem does not exist. Only a minority of people habitually concern themselves with things beyond their own nose tip. This is observed again and again.

Add: I think I was being too harsh on GameB. This is just the way the newest generation is learning about the predicament. Everybody fits the pieces together in the framework they're familiar with.

[Hristo Botev]

It was my experience (and I've argued this here recently as well) that joining ProtoB doesn't work because "community" is no substitute for hard skills. In terms of time-scales this is proceeding very slow. There are still very few people ready for ProtoB being too locked-into GameA. Lots of talk, but there are too few voting with their wallets and feet.

Listened to some of this podcast on the walk home, and it sounds like this divide as between a individual vs. systemic solution is what caused this the game b thing to implode initially. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Glgcl9AVWbA

ETA: Seems like the proverbial chicken and egg predicament.

[Riggerjack]

Hey actually - what? Not "what" as in, I don't get those sentences I quoted, because I do, I mean, "what" as in where are *you* coming from?

Yeah. Uh. Sorry.

Hi.

I read your full journal, and really enjoyed it. I meant to check in at the end, but life gets in the way. My post above wasn't a very good introduction.

I'm riggerjack. I've been unintentionally confusing folks around here for years. I've been restricting my posting lately, while dealing with our mini-apocalypse. It's allowed me to go do some deep thinking on an abstract path, and it seems I have forgotten my manners on my return. Sorry about that.

Please, try rereading my posts, with the knowledge that I wrote them with the best of intentions, though perhaps with less skill than was appropriate. I saw that neither had the intended effect.

As for the Plan B gibberish, I agree, it's mainly gibberish. I just saw a video of Bret Weinstein as I was in that deep dive, and it was odd seeing someone else describe something like my more abstract thoughts, from the other side. As I was exploring and feeling out some idea space, plan b kinda describes similar limits. But I was working from here to there, and he was trying to describe his version of what there could be. This is far, far from a mental model, just me trying to communicate while too much of my mind was still back there, playing with plan b possibility space.

In any case, sorry I didn't do a better job of communication. I have Asperger's, and sometimes I post what seems clear to me at the time, but upon rereading later, it's clear that I forgot to translate my thoughts to english. Should you read some of these, probably best to just ignore it and move on. If it's important, I will bug you with it again, at another time, in another way.

Anyway, hi! Nice journal!

[AxelHeyst]

Cool, thanks for the reply.

Your posts across the forum have been intriguing me, because maybe 1/3 I agreed with outright, 1/3 I disagreed with assuming I knew what you meant (which is a hefty assumption there) and 1/3 went over my head. And sometimes I'm not sure which posts fall under which bucket.

I particularly value and seek out ways of thinking that I don't "get", partly from a motivation to add to my "latticework of mental models" (Charlie Munger) and partly because a hobby of mine is trying to understand where the people I'm interacting with are coming from, what's going on in their heads, because that's step 1 to having meaningful relationships. (And because other people's minds were a complete black hole to me until my mid-20's or so, and not coincidentally that's when the world seemed to start opening up in a big way, so I got positive reinforcement for this hobby).

Long-winded way of saying right on, thanks for reading and for the comments, feel free to keep dropping thoughts in here. I always start off assuming someone means well until proven to be an asshole.

[Riggerjack]

I always start off assuming someone means well until proven to be an asshole.

Well, perhaps I can created a new category in your mind. For I am generally, a well meaning asshole.

Anyway, since it's on my mind, I am going to try to describe the missing piece you, CL, and alphaville were dancing around in the techno-optimism thread.

Wish me luck.