Open letter to CollapseNet and all other groups of a survivalist orientation

The following is a letter I wrote to the administrator of CollapseNet, but the message applies to other groups. I believe we are headed toward even more difficult times, but there are different ways to approach the problem. I have made a choice in the matter of which way to focus my attention and this letter reflects that.  If you disagree, fine, and you are welcome to even state so in a comment. But I will not engage in debate on this particular issue because I think it is a waste of our energy. Only time will tell which side was right.

Dear Administrator,

I have not been a member for quite a few months now and had asked once before to be dropped from these emails; I now ask again. I’ve decided to part ways with all people and groups that basically have a survivalist approach toward these difficult times.  Don’t get me wrong. I know collapse is going to happen, and living in earthquake country, I know it is wise to "prepare." But you folks who think that people should buy and store 6 months worth of food, buy gold and silver, and spend $720 on a tracker school and urban escape are yuppies who don’t have answers for urban poor folks like me who don’t have the money to do those things.

That you really don’t have any answers for people like me is not so much of a problem as the fact that you wouldn’t really admit it. You never said "you guys are screwed because you don’t have the money to buy the resources (land, food, etc)." I looked for that honesty and never found it. There were just ideas like Stringing up plastic bottles in your apartment window so that you would have a few scrap of veggies to feed some anorexic looking 20 year old vegetarian female. But a look in the web site of a place that sells the guts of such a system, shows that it costs $700. You just went on with your exclusive stories and your expensive courses and the message that we have got to prepare for the worst rather than use this time build something totally different.

Someone like me is actually your adversary. I am part of the groups you are afraid will come and steal your food and money in the desperate violent times you are sure lay ahead. You will be right if most people look at this collapse phenomenon in fear and survivalism. Ironically, the suggestion some of you make that poor folks like me band into tight-knit communities to help each other out, should enable us to solve our problems in another way. But although you are creating databases of resources, a good idea in itself, the underlying idea of your site is separatist. Those with the money to get survival resources must escape the urban areas to protect themselves and what they have.
And in doing that you are sowing the seeds of destruction for the post-collapse society, because, once again a "civilization" will be built on fear. Will humanity ever learn to get out of that cycle? If it doesn’t, should any of us survive or should we just give Mother Earth a chance to make a different species that will treat Her and each other with more kindness and respect?

Your lifeboat metaphor makes me think of the Titanic. And certainly corporate capitalism and industrial  civilization is headed to the murky depths of history as it has struck the iceberg of resource constraints.  But the problem with lifeboats is that a lot of people never have a chance to make it to a lifeboat. In the Titanic example, only the people in first class–the folks with the money–got on lifeboats and then only some of them. Lives were lost, not only because of failure to prepare adequately–there were not enough spaces for everyone on board–but because of the classism and sexism that prevented the lives of the poorer passengers in steerage and second class as well as most of the men in first class to be saved.

I see no purpose for someone like me to join a lifeboat anyway because the post-collapse world that you envision would not have room for someone like me. I am 55, my training is more academic than practical and my productivity, such as it is, has been hampered by the affects of two strokes and a heart attack. In the low tech, austere, violent world of your vision, I would be quickly tabbed a useless eater and eliminated. I would not want to live in such a world anyway. The low tech part wouldn’t bother me so much as the survivalist mentality.

 
I do believe there are other ways to live but they require changing the metaphor from lifeboat to phoenix, the mythical bird that rises from its own ashes. If you really have good information, why don’t you stay with us and help us learn, as the Rhizome Collective of Austin, Texas did, to build a new and better world right here in our cities ? In other words, have the guts to share instead of being cowards who run away. Your North, East and South compass points are correct.  But your west compass point,  the inevitable  loss of billions of lives, is wrong, terribly wrong. Such loss of life is inevitable only if people focus on that outcome instead of building the alternatives.

I don’t see what you are doing as building an alternative when it is wrapped in exclusivity, fear and survivalism.  You are just making sure your own asses are safe from the "great unwashed." You would deny this I am sure, but I will quote you Albert Einstein: "You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war."

You are preparing for war.  I am preparing for peace and prosperity.  Time will tell which of us is right. All I know is that the future is not written in stone. Though I am not a Christian, I agree with a saying attributed to Jesus to the effect of “Store up your treasures in Heaven for where your treasures are your heart will be also.” Or as the New Agers say, “What you think about, comes about.”

What are you thinking?

As Murrow and Olberman used to say, Good Night and Good Luck."

Kellia Ramares
Oakland, CA
Facebook Page: The End of Money
Twitter: EndofMoney
Email: TheEndofMoney@gmail.com

Why must we pay to live on the planet we’re born on?

From: endmoney.infoBy: Kéllia Ramares