Say what you mean and mean what you say

Words act like neurotransmitters that send messages to your body that generate feelings. Your words play a critical role in determining your moods, health and happiness and that of the people you speak with. Here’s how to get a better grip on language.

The following piece, adapted from ‘You Are What You Say’ by Matthew Budd and Larry Rothstein explores the excellent work of Fernando Flores on language and affect

You are in language already all of the time. But you are not skillful at observing it because you have no powerful distinctions for doing so. With skill at observation comes more success in life and less suffering. According to Flores, there are only five kinds of linguistic “actions”:

REQUESTS: A request is an action that you take when you seek the assistance of another in satisfying an underlying concern that you have. For example, “Please pick up some rice and broccoli at the market for dinner tonight.”

PROMISES: A promise is what you speak to indicate your commitment to fulfilling what someone else has requested. (“I will get the flounder and broccoli.”) It implies that you understand the request fully and that you are competent and sincere about fulfilling the request.

DECLARATIONS: A declaration is an utterance in which some¬one with the authority to do so brings something into being that wasn’t there before. Personal declarations such as “I will lose 30 pounds by July 1st” have the power to shape our lives, if followed by consistent behavior.

ASSESSMENTS: An assessment is a judgment that you make about the world in the interest of taking some action. For example, in the interest of going to a ball game, I might make the assessment, “It’s a beautiful day,” in which no wind and a temperature of 8o degrees are my standards. On the other hand, in the interest of going sailing, my assess¬ment, “It’s a beautiful day” means that the wind is blowing, the harder the better. Assessments are never the truth.

ASSERTIONS: An assertion is a statement you make for which you are willing to provide evidence. For example, if I say it is 68 degrees in this room, I’m willing to show this to you on a thermometer. We live by the social agreement that this device reflects temperature. In other words, a society builds certain ways of establishing and asserting common, often quantitative values. These assertions live for us as “facts”: They are either true or false.

LANGUAGE ALLOWS PEOPLE TO BECOME AWARE OF THEMSELVES AND OTHERS AND BUILDS TRUST, INTIMACY AND, YES, SUFFERING. WE CAN’T EVEN IMAGINE LIFE WTHOUT IT.

The 10 Linguistic Viruses

Breakdowns in these actions generally result from what I call “linguistic viruses.” They attack relationships, alter the structures of the individuals in them and cause dissatisfac¬tion, bad moods and even ill health. Learning what they are will allow you to listen to others more effectively, and heal them and yourself.

1. NOT MAKING REQUESTS. There may be something that you want or need from someone else, but you don’t make a request. Why is this? You may have a reticence or fear about asking others for something: They could say no and cause you to feel rejected. In fact, a no to a request is just that ¬no to the action of requesting, not a rejection of the person.

Another reason people don’t make requests is that they’re afraid others will think they’re

incompetent. But making a request is not an admission of weakness. The president of the United States or the CEO of a large corporation makes a staggering number of requests each day. In fact, one aspect of power is the capacity to make powerful requests. Still another reason people don’t make requests is that they think a request is an imposition. They forget that one way that people achieve meaning in their lives is in fulfill¬ing the requests of others.

A request simply invites another person to participate in your life. Take this as a way to honor others, not to burden them.

2. LIVING WITH UNCOMMUNICATED EXPECTATIONS.

A common form of “not requesting” occurs when an individual lives in a world of expectations that are really just unex¬pressed requests. Often we have private conversations with ourselves about what others should and should not do. But we never make overt requests of these people. Subsequently, when they don’t do what we expect, we’re disappointed, resentful and angry. The solution is to translate “shoulds” into clear requests. The benefit will be less resentment, less anger, less guilt and more satisfying relationships.

3. MAKING UNCLEAR REQUESTS.

A husband may say to his wife, “I want you to support my career.” Can you see that the husband may have a different picture than the wife of what “support” looks like? What kind of support? When? All of this information is missing. Later on, when a minor prob¬lem arises, the maker of the unclear request is likely to say, “You promised to support my career, but you didn’t!”

To coordinate your life successfully with others, your requests must be precise and detailed. You’re not insulting the listener, you’re setting up the possibility for mutual satis¬faction. It’s not enough that you understand; the person receiving the request must share your understanding.

4. NOT OBSERVING THE MOOD OF YOUR REQUESTS.

The mood of your utterance, as much as your words, affects the listener. If you’re demanding, people might decline your requests because they see you as arrogant and righteous, or they might make promises to you out of intimidation, not choice. My high school algebra teacher always made requests in the tone and mood of demands. Students rarely declined his requests, but acted resentfully when they tried to do what he had asked.

On the other hand, I had a patient named Shirley who made all her requests in the mood of begging. I always felt manipulated by her she was so pathetic that I didn’t want to make her suffer, so I promised what she requested so as not to feel guilty. Weakness and guilt what a combination! A suggestion: Observe the mood produced in the listener of your request; adjust your mood to produce the “listen¬ing” you want.

5. PROMISING EVEN WHEN YOU AREN’T CLEAR WHAT WAS REQUESTED.

Committing yourself when you aren’t clear about what you’ve committed to is foolish. Sometimes a person thinks he knows what’s being asked of him, so he begins an activity, such as making a meal. But as he goes along, his lack of clarity is revealed. He becomes con¬fused. What did she really want? What if I’m doing it wrong? If you’re not sure what the requester wants, clarify it with him or her. You won’t look stupid. Rather, you’ll be building an identity of being commit¬ted to fulfilling his or her request.

6. NOT DECLINING REQUESTS.

Some of us say ‘yes’ to every request. We’ve been trained to please other people, and this is made manifest in our compliance. The problem with this belief is that it’s destructive for both you and others. The yes sayers are often overloaded with promises to keep. The result is a perpetual fear of failure, which prompt¬ed the compliance in the first place.

This vicious cycle generates anxiety, exhaustion and burnout. Things aren’t much better for the people receiving the yes sayers’ promises. They never know which promises will be fulfilled and which ones are in jeopardy. Over time, people become distrustful of the yes sayer. They think, “You just never can be sure about him; he’s not sincere.”

An inability to say no is not a prob¬lem of articulation or diction, but of an embodied tendency to have to say yes, to be “nice” and not to upset others. Learning to say no requires practice for those yes sayers who find it difficult.

7. BREAKING PROMISES WITHOUT TAKING CARE: UNDERMINING TRUST.

I don’t want to make this section sound moralistic, as in “Thou shalt not break promises.” Rather, I want to show the human and biological consequences of a broken commitment to coordinate action. When you make a promise, you’re building expectation that you will take action. If the promise is broken, the person will begin to lose trust in you and feel betrayed.

We are all human and cannot know the future. In the process of fulfilling a promise, things may happen that keep you from completion. If you simply ignore your promise, you’re consciously betraying your word and not taking care of the other party. In contrast, if you contact the requester, describe the present problems that are keeping you from fulfilling your promise, apologize for the broken promise, offer to make a new promise in a time frame that you can guarantee and assist with the cleaning up of any mess that you produced, Both parties feel relieved. The relationship can even be strengthened by this mutually caring action.

8. TREATING ASSESSMENTS AS FACTS. There is no truth to statements of judgment. You can provide evidence for what you say, but that still doesn’t make it the truth. If we treat assessments as truth, conflict arises. For instance, my wife, Roz, and I both love a “nice” home. For me this means a study, lots of bookshelves, a place for my stereo and a quiet bedroom. For Roz, it means colors, textures, lighting, spaces, a sense of grandeur and flow. Can you imagine searching for “nice” home together? We must blend, accept and weave our truths.

People who hold their assessments as the truth are generally rigid or arrogant. They cannot stand diversity and become angry at differences. These people are a pain to be around and are themselves uneasy.

9. MAKING ASSESSMENTS WITHOUT RIGOROUS GROUNDING.

Even though your judgments aren’t the truth, you can make them with rigorous “grounding” – that is, you can say what you say based on evidence. People who make assessments without rigor are viewed as flaky and full of opinions that change like the weather. They aren’t taken seriously and they often suffer from insecurity and low self-esteem. Gossip is an especially pernicious kind of assessment, which lacks rigor and purpose. Gossips get a false sense of power from this activity, but underneath they remain insecure and uneasy. Connect your declarations with doable plans for action for which you are accountable,

10. MAKING FANTASY AFFIRMATIONS AND DECLARATIONS.

When you make a fantasy affirmation or declaration, you assume that it will happen by itself. An example would be declaring that you would like to start a restaurant, even though you don’t know anything about cooking or how to run a business. By contrast, a realistic affirmation or declaration pictures a reality that does not yet exist, but is attainable through a series of reasonable steps.

President Kennedy made a famous declaration in 1962 that America would put a man on the moon by the end of the decade. Although he didn’t like to see it, we did accomplish what seemed like science fiction at the time of his utterance. His declaration was grounded in a rigorous appraisal of our country’s scientific and technological capabilities. Languaging and Well-Being:

The Viruses in Action

The 10 Linguistic Viruses not only create ineffectiveness and friction between people, but also produce negative mood states, which, in turn, threaten your well-being and health. For instance, people who never make requests usually don’t get what they want in life and are often disappointed and stuck. Such people may have secret expectations of others, which they never express. This also leads to disappointment and anger and resentment. Inertia and anger are both negative mood states that produce bodily changes in the muscles, circulation, heart and brain.

People who can’t decline requests also place their health in jeopardy. They are often overburdened and become exhausted, burned out and depressed. If language is the foundation upon which human life is build, on which we construct our human interactions and even our notion of self, then competence in language will bring you more satisfaction, joy and effectiveness in living. My work with thousands of patients bears this out. When people become aware of their behavior in the linguistic domain, they achieve greater effectiveness, greater satisfaction and a better mood.

Matthew Budd designed the first behavioral medicine department at the Harvard Community Health Plan in Boston. Larry Rothstein has collaborated on several self-help books. Adapted from You Are What You Say by Matthew Budd, M.D., and Larry Rothstein, Ed.D. Copyright 2000 by Matthew Budd, M.D., and Larry Rothstein, Ed.D.

Reprinted by permission of Crown, a division of Random House, Inc. Date of publication: December 2000, Volume 17, Issue 9. NEW AGE (ISSN 1098447X) by New Age Publishing, Inc., 42 Pleasant St., Watertown, MA 02472; (617) 926-0200.

© 2011, Sunny Soleil. All rights reserved but relaxed Pierre Soleil We like to pass on the word so YOU are welcome to use this document in accordance with the Creative Commons license. That is, you can tweet, facebook, repost, excerpt and even adapt it so long as you don’t pretend it’s yours for commercial purposes

I want to know why after years studying physics and chemistry all I can remember is what a rheostat does [dimmer switch technology] and how to change a plug.. oh yes, I also remember that Na = sodium and that sulphuric acid really burns!

I sat for years in a geography class listening to Miss Church droning on about the products and flora/fauna of faraway lands.. whilst being forced to take down all she said using a dip in pen and an inkwell.. no biros!  I remember that Hawick produces wool, and that was only because her Scottish pronunciation of the word was so amusing.

I spent years creating great masterpieces of essays only to find I had been downgraded because of crossings out and inkblots.  A fine way to encourage a budding author.

I was forced to memorise useless facts and wear a uniform that included lisle stockings, a boater hat and flannel knickers with a pocket for my hanky.  When I individualised my clothing I was called a rebel.

I worked beside people who were labelled as dumb because their academic abilities weren’t up to scratch.. and yet I have seen these same people go on to make great successes of their own lives, not because of but in spite of this so called privileged education.

This is what I call crap education.. and believe it or not, parents  paid good money to subject their kids to this rubbish.

I was very ‘clever’ in school [that means I could REMEMBER FACTS] and they had high hopes of me filling their expected quota of Oxbridge students.   I wanted to study psychology and they laughed at me.   Why?  Well, I represented the school’s worst nightmare.

On one hand I was a potentially great academic star for their portfolio but I did the minimum amount of work to get by [my reports often read A minus, can do better!].   On the other hand I was the ringleader of a group who smoked, played truant to sell and make wire jewellery in Russell Square, ran away from the games pitch, drank in the pub underage and hemmed my school skirt into a mini-skirt– we won’t talk about the drawing of graffiti in the metro and we certainly won’t talk about the hideous practical jokes we played on teachers.    For this I was labelled a rebel.

What if the school had looked at me for who I was.. instead of labelling me A- can do better, they could have praised me for my good results.. Instead of labelling me a rebel troublemaker, they could have focused on my individuality and my potential for leadership and entertainment.

Rebels make great leaders and motivators

Instead of dowmarking me for inkblots they should have seen through them to my eloquent words and nurtured me as a great writer…  They didn’t. They failed me miserably. I a lucky, I found a way to turn it round thanks to the many self growth programmes I have taken.   Many people don’t!

Learning how to live

So, Johnny what did you learn in school today…? How many of you have asked that question of your children and how many have been asked that themselves…

How many of us can reply, we learnt to be nice to each other or we learnt that together we are strong or we learnt that it is everyone’s basic right to have food shelter and education [we’ll come to what kind of education later!!]   Not a lot of us,  I suspect!

Schools spend far too much time teaching kids facts, history dates, chemistry symbols etc… This is crap education promoted and encouraged by generations of governments and compliant voters.

Schools place excessive value on academic achievement.  Parents, many of them ignorant themselves of what makes up good education, berate their kids for not passing exams and encourage them to swot, memorising fact after fact.

Some parents remember their own awful experiences at school and conspire with their kids to play truant.    Other parents despair because little Johnny likes to play football instead of studying yet when he tells them of his dreams to be another David Beckham or Joe Namath, they dash his hopes with tales of how so few succeed in a competitive world and advise him to buckle down and work for his exams so he might get a decent job with a pension in local government or a bank!    And most of the kids who don’t succeed academically, are discarded as no-hopers.

OK, I know that things are changing, but is it radical enough or soon enough.. and how many people are aware of the desperate need for a complete revision of the current education system?

It’s time for an alternative curriculum

Facts about anything and everything are freely available on the internet.  Kids can find out about anything that interests them if they are encourage do so.

Learning that Hitler is an evil man in history is not useful.  Being encouraged to discover that Hitler was helpless without all the people and governments who accepted and supported him in his philosophy, is far more useful..

Caitlin Moran, the prodigy child author who produced her first best seller at age 17 was removed from the formal education system by her parents.  Caitlin came from a large, blue collar, Irish family. Caitlin’s blessing was that her parents had radical ideas about education.  They filled the house with books and encouraged their children to discover for themselves, allowing them to develop their own natural talents.

Caitlin became an author, another sister became an expert on dinosaurs and each child found that special something inside.

“ Follow your fascinations and the money will appear” – Joseph Campbell

I was talking to a cab driver the other day who was worried about his daughter not performing at school  I asked him what she was good at.. he said, she likes to draw.   By the end of the journey, he said to me ‘You know you’ve made me think.  I ought to spend some time finding out what my daughter loves doing and what she’s good at and encourage her in that’.  I smiled at the thought of having made a difference somewhere…How many other parents are convinced their children will fail because they don’t rank high up in the academic achievement list.

How many schools, like mine, encourage people to go on to further education in the form of teachers training, because it is better than no further erducation and a second best for those that failed to get to university… I dread to think how many teachers out there are the product of the ‘well I studied for it, might as well use it’ syndrome.

I spent 10 years working as a secretary because I took a course ‘as a back up’, when I dropped out of University… I didn’t get to study psychology, didn’t try the Oxbridge exams [much despair an dhair wringing on the part of my teachers]..and I discovered that the study of English literature was not for me!

I was a lousy secretary and I suspect some of those teachers are just as lousy.   Whatever job you do it is vital that you are doing your lifework.. what is you.. and if you aren’t, you will feel the sense of being off kilter… many of us live with that for the rest of our lives.. how sad!  But it’s not too late for our kids..

So, I’m promoting the development of a blueprint for a radical new curriculum.. it excludes all factual learning and it was inspired by Neale Donald Walsh’s Conversations with God, Book 2 and the work I have been doing with Joseph Riggio around realising your personal myth and living from the space of who you are, completely.

Walsh asks these questions some of which I have modified and added comments to– you may want to consider them carefully?

Why do you spank children the moment they exit from the womb, wrapping them in blankets and keeping them from their mothers? Is this really the only way to get them to breathe.. I think not!   And why do they need to be cleaned up in preference to being placed on their mother’s belly while still attached… Why do women give birth upside down, against nature…and gravitiy.

Why do you allow some of your child’s earliest images to be exposure to violence..? The media is a powerful, influential, distorted and addictive force and  yet we allow it to babysit our kids.. If you were interviewing a nanny for this job and she told you her favourite books were murder mysteries and that her hobby was talking about death and violence, and that when her friends came round you could expect them to indulge in fist fights and stabbings…would you employ her.. I think not!  Yet you give the TV [purveyor of violence, crime, greed and anger] pride of place in your children’s education!

Why do you teach children to be ashamed of their bodies and their nakedness. As a child my parents were naturally naked around the house and I never remember my father covering himself in shame. Consequently I never had the experience of shock and horror at seeing a penis for the first time.

Why do you think children spend time in the playground exploring each other, maybe its because they’ve never seen another naked body.. who knows…Why do we teach children not to touch themselves and make them afraid of giving themselves pleasure.. What awful messages of shame are we passing on?

Why don’t you teach children about movement and music and the joy of art and the mystery of fairy tales and the wonder of life?

Why do you put kids in schools where competition is encouraged and there is an interminable race to be best be first and slower than average pace is barely tolerated.

Why don’t schools understand the gifts of ‘different’ brain wiring and dyslexic people who have become great architects, mechanics and artists, like the guy who carved detailed figures out of toothpicks, barely visible to the naked eye.. And how did he discover this talent?    Boredom led him to find something to do while the lessons passed him by.  He was lucky, he found value in his ‘disability’..

Dyslexics have an ability to visualize in 3d i.e look around corners in a way so-called normal people cannot.  That’s why my husband can put together stuff without measuring just from the feel of it.

Most dyslexics have no idea that they have unusual gifts around perspective.  Instead, they get shunted into ‘special classes’ and classed as learning disabled..And, yes, they are disabled in a society that places value on facts more than intuition, creativity and exploration.

Why don’t kids get to learn from the beginning about critical thinking, logic and evaluation, using their intuition rather than rules and memorised systems of a society which has already proven itself to be unable to live satisfactorily by these methods?

Walsh suggests that the new curriculum should have 3 core concepts.

Awareness, Honesty and Responsibility.  I’d add Curiosity and a Go for It Attitude as well as practical skills.   In addition they need to learn to read and use a computer so that they can explore facts for themselves.

New Paradigm Curriculum

Here are some of Walsh’s suggested courses

• Understanding Power
• Peaceful conflict resolution
• Loving relationships
• Function and interrelation of body mind and spirit
• How to learn
• Creativity and using it
• Joyous sexual expression
• Fairness, Compassion and Tolerance
• Awareness and responsibility
• Science and spirituality
• Ethical economics – trading, bartering, resource based economics

We need a Holistic Curriculum NOW

And we also need to teach practical skils for the new paradigm that is evolving.

Permaculture – how to grow perennial food plants symbiotically without pesticides or fertilizers incorporating useful animals and water catchment.

Natural building – creating homes and other structures from natural resource materials relevant to the area  e.g. Adobe in desert areas and Cob  [clay straw and sand] in other areas. Earthship homes are created out of discarded tyres filled with mud.

Herbal medicine – learning the healing and nutritional value of local herbs, and how to make tincture and powder medicines from plants, how to use plants in emergencies

Repurposing – learning how to create useful stuff from material that would normally be thrown away.

Basic Survival Skills – how to make a fire, how to cook on a woodstove, how to forate for edible plants, how to catch and cook wild game and so on.

Nutrition and Food Awareness – every person needs to know what crap is in which processed foods and how it can affect them. And they need to know what goodness is in natural foods and how to grow and prepare their own food so that they are not forced into dependence on the processed/junk food industries poisons.

Walsh points out that many of his suggested topics are already taught in the guise of Social Studies.   BUT it only takes up a minute percentage of the current curriculum. Walsh suggests it should BE the curriculum and I believe that it should also include the practical topics.

Once a kid has developed creativity and learnt how to learn, and a sense of the wonder of each individual, the world is their oyster.. if they want facts they are all out there on the internet, in books etc…

This is where NLP and associated ‘sciences’ come in useful.. Kids can be taught some of the skills of rapport, language, second positioning, pacing and leading, creativity processes, creating anchors for the good times, positive self talk, affirmations etc…

The Hero’s Journey – everyone’s path is unique

Joseph Riggio, my former mentor bases his work on, amongst many other philosophies and scientific, social, psychological, neurological studies,  Joseph Campbell’s study of mythology..and Roye Frazier’s Generative Imprint work.   Frazier believes that we all hold every experience somatically in our body.. and that we can relearn the ultimate state of being at our best.. and with guidance can learn to pinpoint it exactly, by making minute adjustments to our posture, line of sight etc..   This is the essence of the practical work I do with personal coaching clients.

Campbell says ““If you follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track, which has been there all the while waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living.”

When you learn to Do what is YOU, you will be happy.. BE who you truly are, follow your divine blueprint and it will all work out OK.

Campbell examines the common underlying theory  and structure of mythology all over the world.   It all follows the same pattern.  Campbell outlines this in what he calls the Hero’s Journey.  It goes like this.

We all hear a call to adventure, many of us ignore it because we have been taught to buckle down and accept our lot.  Get a sensible job rings in our ears, competing with the knocking.   Some of us never answer the call and die unhappy and unfulfilled.   The call is always about who you are asking to be heard.

When we do answer the call, it is because the knocking is so loud we are compelled.  At that point, a master teacher appears [remember that saying ‘when the student is ready the teacher appears].. then we begin our trials and throughout magic helpers come to us..

Finally we come through, find the elixir and take it back.. but of course we know that the elixir is not the holy grail, but one of many similar elixirs… and before we know it we are ready for the next call.. It takes courage, but once the leap of faith is made, and the intent is out there, the universe conspires to assist…

I like this because it works for me and I am currently experiencing my latest call to adventure…

Instead of teaching kids, “Life happens, struggle through because it isn’t fair but tough”,  we could teach them that Life Happens, What Next? If you can’t change something move on..   there is only living in the now then moving on..

Life is a journey and we are all unique so when we open ourselves and our kids out to that fact and teach them the values of harmonious living, and how to survive in an alternative system, we will truly be contributing to the evolution of the world through the evolution of each individual to their own greatness.   If we continue to teach them what hasn’t worked for us, we are not following the basic presuppositions of life.. If it doesn’t work, do something else..

My son the Surveyor – NOT

I had a client recently, a 21 year old student who came to see me ostensibly for flirting tips.  What he really wanted was to talk to someone about his dreams and desires.  He was studying to be a chartered surveyor which was a ‘follow in the footsteps’ of a respected step-father, a successful property developer.  And yet what he wanted to do was make a difference in the world.

His plan was to study and open his own company and give lots of money to charity.. When I worked with him, I uncovered that he didn’t really want to be a chartered surveyor, but felt that unless he had a ‘good job’ he couldn’t make a difference.. he equated money and charitable donations with the only way he could do it.

Once he had expanded from his tunnel vision he realised that he could not contribute to the world by doing work he hated.. and that he would have to seek other paths to follow his bliss… I love my work!

And so, when you ask each kid, how are you when you are at your best.. you will find a uniquely different answer. If being at their best means writing poetry and living with very little to do so, fine.

If being at their best means running a large business that gives people work fine, and if being at their best means travelling the world looking for fauna and flora fine .

AND if, like the lovely lady who sweeps the road in Hammersmith a London suburb, [she got the British Empire Medal for long service, so I took a chance meeting on the street to ‘interview her’] being at your best is just looking around and seeing that she has made a difference and feeling a pride in a street well swept – wonderful!

Let Your Children BE

Until we give children free rein to be themselves and provide an education system that fosters this fully, we will continue to produce generations of unhappy people locked into what other people think they ought to do, taking on beliefs and values that aren’t right for them… What a terrible thought…! I know, because I’ve been struggling to emerge for a long time.

It took me 50 odd years to travel my path, rewrite the old programmes, gain courage and attitude and create new programmes, to believe in me being me and to find my way… perhaps we can help the next generations of kids to find their bliss a little more quickly!!!

Sunny Soleil Sunny is a survivor of a crap education system . She is a writer, facilitator and coach. A Licensed trainer of NLP  and MythoSelf Process -tm Facilitator as well as a Licensed Strategic Attraction-tm coach.   a consummate networker.  Her passions are communication and linguistics, permaculture and a new kind of education system that teaches the skills of today – natural building, growing food forests, water conservation and catchment, repurposing, alternative healthcare prevention and sharing and caring with a focus on 7 generations into the future.

Sunny is writing a futuristic novel and developing, with her husband, Forest Gardener, a transition workshop  for urbanites who want to sample living communally and simply and learn some simple everyday creative survival skills.

To enquire about the following click the link

Transition Courses in Northern GA/Tennessee

or

Pathfinder life coaching with Sunny

© 2010 – 2011, Sunny Soleil. All rights reserved but relaxed Pierre Soleil We like to pass on the word so YOU are welcome to use this document in accordance with the Creative Commons license. That is, you can tweet, facebook, repost, excerpt and even adapt it so long as you don’t pretend it’s yours for commercial purposes

Copyright is the result of our requiring money to share our gifts

A friend recently made a statement about  ’thieving’ words as she quoted some powerful words she’d found on another friends page. This thought of ‘thieving’  comes from a generally accepted paradigm that words, like skills and products are owned and can be exchanged for money.

Seeing this word has given rise to some contemplation about copyright and whether messages or indeed any of our gifts should be ‘owned’.   I am beginning to believe that there is no thieving.  This is not easy for I have made a living in the past from selling my words through self-help books.

We crave money because our basic needs aren't met. If they were we could use our gifts as TRUE gifts

Copyright and ownership and thieving are all restrictions and ‘abuses’ stemming from the love of the wrong god – the god of Money instead of loving God the All-One, All-that-is.

We feel guilty at ‘stealing’ another’s words and I too have felt a sense of ‘being robbed’, when my words weren’t credited to me. But that is because we have learned to use our ‘gifts’ as a means to supply us with our needs.

But I sense this is  my ego taking hold and I could learn, as we all could, that our creative gifts, including the good words that we send out  from our own channelling of what is right should not be copyright or used for selfish purposes.  And yet this goes against a paradigm in this world that who writes the words has ownership and that ownership can be used for personal commercial gain.  What a struggle this is…

And it’s a struggle because we need our basic needs to be met in order to survive.

Wouldn’t a truly self-less lover of humanity, and I am struggling with this, as an  ego-bound human, wish only for his or her words to carry the message and know that the message is more important than the messenger.  In other words, our gifts should not be gifts for us to selfishly profit from but  GIFTS TO HUMANITY.  And if our basic needs are met, we can truly use our gifts as gifts.

Breaking the circle of selfish concern

We are trapped in a circle of needing to meet our basic requirements, and having to use our gifts in exchange for ‘money’ in order to purchase those basic needs.   And we are trapped in a a mesmeric trance of believing we need more than the basics in order to be happy.    We learn that we can feel good when we buy a new pair of shoes, when we can purchase a planet ticket or buy gourmet food or anything beyond our basic needs.

Breaking the circle of gifts for money is one of the most challenging things we can do.

We need to break the circle of money, supply basic needs to all and enter the circle of gifts

I therefore declare that all words I put out are free to all to resubmit.  I do not ask for credit, but I do I ask that no one claims these words as their own or uses them to make their own selfish profit, but,  instead, uses them for the good of all.  The free Commons License states that the words may be freely passed on as long as they remain intact.   And even that should not be written in stone.

Sharing with Integrity for the Greater Purpose

If a particular message has been crafted, and changing it may change the original intent then it should remain intact, if the change is used to skew the intent in a way that it is NOT for the greater good.  If someone finds a way to pass on this message by changing the words I have used or using them as a basic jumping off point and by doing that they give greater power to the message, then, I must, if I am considering the greater good, be happy to have this happen.

Telling ourselves the complete Truth.

God knows the truth about us. Do we?

Granny Matthis, who is 97 and strives to be very pure said to me ‘God knows everything about us’  He knows all our transgressions and beyond that he knows when we are being really true. Humans are easily able to justify their actions through deeply seated personal lies that even we don’t recognize.

On our website we state that people may copy or use the words and we ask for a link back to us.  If I am to examine my motives I must recognize that while we would like people to go to our site and read the rest of our words, for we have some well crafted messages I also see a deeper motive.  We have affiliate links to products we like, so I know that my desire for that back-link is partly  based on our need to make the dreaded money.

And, like me, you have to live.   What is wrong here is the way we’ve been taught to ‘make a living’ versus ‘living life’.  We’ve been taught to pursue money to have a life, when living life in our true purpose is all we need to do.  And to do that we need to have our basic needs met.

This leads me to the philosophical contemplation of how I long to have no need to sell anything to make money and also to how I can regulate my acquisitoin of money so that ONLY AS LONG AS THE MONEY SYSTEM STILL EXISTS, I am directing it through who I am, to be for the greater good.

Embracing a simpler life is a small step towards freeing ourselves from the money system

We are in a transition phase from using money as the medium of exchange and all of us being focused on satisfying our own individual needs to a world where our basic needs are met and we can truly offer our gifts as gifts.  We must begin by simplifying our lives and working towards ensuring everyone has the basic simple gifts of life.

So right now I’m having to make do and do the best I can.

Praying for the minimum we need to live our purpose and share our gifts v praying for stuff

God, please give me only what I need to be able to freely share my gifts with the world

When I pray to God for ‘stuff’ I try not to ask for a car or a horse or ten dollars. I try to ask that God will give me enough that I may continue to live on this earth and be able to do the work I was put here to do in relation to the greater good.

This is something I am trying hard to be.. a servant of God of the Greater Force of this Universe… and of course, I have had years of ego training to the contrary.  I am praying that I will continue to develop this way of being.. and it is a struggle.. Life here on earth and living right is not easy… it is part of the evolution of humans into higher purpose non-egoic other-centered entities.

And we get greedy and live from selfish concern because we are biologically driven to have our basic needs supplied.  And in that drive, we’ve lost sight of what ‘basic’ means and struggle to acquire things so that we can feel good.  Yet feeling good should come from living a natural earth connected life.

WHEN WE SUPPLY THE BASICS TO ALL HUMANS – EVERY-ONE’S GIFTS CAN BE TRUE GIFTS

Air, Food, Shelter, Water, Love are humanity's basic needs and rights. Let us strive to achieve that

So how can we allow more and more of us to share our gifts freely?

It brings me to the theory I first learned from the Venus Project material and which is based on Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of basic human needs.

Maslow saw that we have a hierarchy of needs and the diagram shows the most necessary at the bottom of the triangle and so on.   Our most necessary need are air to breathe, water and shelter from the elements as well as procreation.  Next in importance is security. We need to know that there will always be a place to lay our head and that we will be safe from predators. Beyond that, as human animals, we need social interaction and love . And beyond that we need esteem, we need to know that our gift is worthwhile and that it contributes to the world and that we have purpose.

If we were all guaranteed basic water, food, shelter and loving human fellowship, then any gifts we have whether it is one for spinning emotive words or building a cob oven, can be just that.. a true gift to the world.

Wow, my conscience and ego are already fighting this.. as I can imagine yours might also.

And this all comes from the one root of belief that dominates most cultures on earth today – we own our gifts and they can be used in exchange for money and thus for our own personal security.  We are all afraid of not having those basic needs as outlined by Maslow.  So we sell ourselves in order to find them.  And we become selfish.  We accumulate for us because we are AFRAID OF NOT HAVING ENOUGH.

What a paradise might we live in if we were so content with the basic needs that giving our gifts was not done out of necessity for those things, but because we are free to give them.. for we no longer need to sell them.

If you knew that you had a place to lay your head that allowed you to sleep well and be fit for the day to come and you had good healthy food and clean water to nourish you with sufficient energy to engage in the world and you knew you had companionship and social interaction… what else do you really need?   How much easier would it be for you to freely share the gifts that you previously sold to get more than you need?

When you take some time for honest inner contemplation you might find that you have been easily able to justify your quest for stuff and money and that you may be telling yourself lies by pretending that you are doing good works, when in fact you are actually satisfying more than your basic needs because you’ve been programmed through fear to think you cannot live without them.

We are in tough transition times and each and every one of us needs to take stock and start telling ourselves the deep honest truth about our own fear and our own greed…

Purpose beyond self and community

If, for example we desire to build an intentional community, we will probably be motivated from a need to meet our own basic needs.  We will come together with that community, in the same way we do with the nuclear family and kin and build a stronghold that will satisfy our community.   But if we don’t take count of the rest of the pattern, those without our walls, we cut ourselves off from the greater purpose of humanity as one unity.

When we can build that community with a focus on meeting our basic needs so that we can facilitate the entire community to release their gifts and that those gifts are used for the purpose of helping those beyond our little clique, then we’ve truly got it.

It’s a long hard road but we won’t survive in loving harmony and recreate the Garden of Eden if we don’t find a way to give all humans what they need to be able to freely share the gifts God gave us.

© 2010, Sunny Soleil. All rights reserved but relaxed Pierre Soleil We like to pass on the word so YOU are welcome to use this document in accordance with the Creative Commons license. That is, you can tweet, facebook, repost, excerpt and even adapt it so long as you don’t pretend it’s yours for commercial purposes

Amish Friendship Bread that you can pass from friend to friend.

The Bread begins with a starter,which used to be an Amish secret, but is now public knowledge so that we may all share frely.  Find the recipe for the Amish Friendship Bread starter at the end of this post.

When you pass the starter on to a friend, make sure they understand that they will need to follow the instructions beginning at day one then will use the Amish Friendship Bread Recipe (with the oil, eggs, vanilla, etc.) on Day 10.

Amish Friendship Bread is not only a lovely bread, it’s also a way to create a flow of giving and abundance by sharing countless loaves of bread baked in different kitchens that all began from the same bowl of simple ingredients. Choose a few friends and start this wonderful tradition, they’ll thank you for it!

The Amish Friendship Bread recipe

Do not use any metal containers or utensils when making this bread. This is important.

Day 1 – receive the starter (the recipe for the starter is below)

Day 2 – stir

Day 3 – stir

Day 4 – stir

Day 5 – Add 1 cup each flour, sugar and milk.

Day 6 – stir

Day 7 – stir

Day 8 – stir

Day 9 – stir

Day 10 – Add 1 cup flour, 1 cup sugar and 1 cup milk. Divide into 4 containers, with 1 cup each for three of your friends and 1 cup for your own loaves. Give friends the instructions for Day 1 through Day 10 and the following recipe for baking the bread.  Remember to write on the bag or container the date you made the batter.  e.g. 05/18/10 = day 1

After removing the 3 cups of batter, combine the remaining cup of Amish Friendship Bread starter with the following ingredients in a large bowl:

1 cup oil
3 eggs
1/2 cup of milk
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. vanilla essence
2 tsp. cinnamon
1 cup sugar
2 cups flour
1/2 cup of milk

1 1/4 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda

Using a wooden spoon beat by hand until well blended. You can add 1 cup raisins/dried fruit, pumpkin pie spice and 1 cup nuts (optional).  Get creative here.

Grease two loaf pans with butter, sprinkle with sugar instead of flour.

Bake at 325 degrees F for 45 minutes to 1 hour (individual oven temperatures vary). Cool 10 minutes, remove from pans. Makes two loaves of Amish Friendship Bread.

Amish Friendship Bread Starter

This is the Amish Friendship Bread Starter Recipe that you’ll need to make the Amish Friendship Bread (above). It is very important to use plastic or wooden utensils and plastic or glass containers when making this. Do not use metal at all!

Ingredients:

1 pkg. active dry yeast
1/4 cup warm water (110°F)
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup white sugar
1 cup warm milk (110°F)

Directions:

1. In a small bowl, dissolve the yeast in warm water for about 10 minutes. Stir well.

2. In a 2 quart glass or plastic container, combine 1 cup sifted flour and 1 cup sugar. Mix thoroughly or the flour will get lumpy when you add the milk.

3. Slowly stir in warm milk and dissolved yeast mixture. Loosely cover the mixture with a lid or plastic wrap. The mixture will get bubbly. Consider this Day 1 of the cycle, or the day you receive the starter.

For the next 10 days handle starter according to the instructions above for Amish Friendship Bread

© 2010, Sunny Soleil. All rights reserved but relaxed Pierre Soleil We like to pass on the word so YOU are welcome to use this document in accordance with the Creative Commons license. That is, you can tweet, facebook, repost, excerpt and even adapt it so long as you don’t pretend it’s yours for commercial purposes

Bruce Thompson*
November 22, 2003

This document offers a comprehensive  summary of the current oil crisis situation, what is going to happen, the inadequacy of expected solutions, how it will affect YOU, why public warning is so late, WHAT YOU CAN DO with more information via links to sites discussion groups and contacts.  You can also download this document from links at the end.

Feed the Future Note – This document was written SEVEN years ago.  The crisis is much more imminent.  Alongside that we have the rise of genetically modified food, natural disasters and more.

YOU CAN MAKE a DIFFERENCE but you MUST ACT NOW. Read this document to inform yourself about peak oil and the implications AND why we must localize food growing.

Oil & Gas Shortages Soon, Final Emptying of Wells

Summary

This document reveals that in this decade:

• After a hundred years of exploration and extraction very little new oil and gas is being found. See graph.  Today, for every barrel of oil discovered, the world consumes four barrels.
• When energy get scarcer and dearer there is very serious disruption of transport, industry, business, government and private life.

Serious shortages and disruptions

• Globally, 90% of transport (road/rail/air/sea) depends on oil. So does industrial & farm equipment (food).
• Much natural gas is used by power generating stations to generate electricity. Gas shortages can therefore trigger grid outages that disable computers, communications and electronic control equipment.
• More than 500,000 oil & gas-based products will also become scarcer and dearer: plastics, clothing, asphalt, tyres, medicines, sealants, inks.

Alternative energy sources cannot compensate

• Hydrogen is not the answer because it is actually made from natural gas, which itself is running out.
• Hydroelectricity, coal, nuclear, windmills, solar etc. cannot be increased sufficiently in time to prevent seriously disruptive shortages of energy.

Difficulties adapting

• Changeovers take years. Our immense existing infrastructure was built assuming plentiful fuels. (Cars, globalization, suburbs, arctic/tropical cities.)
• Changeovers demand fuels to implement them too.
• Coal, nuclear, oilsands etc involve serious pollution of air/water/soil. They use oil/gas/electricity to exploit them.
• The energy decline is strange, unwelcome news to the public. There is confusion, resistance and delay.

Evidence of decline of oil and gas

Some people still say oil and gas are abundant, and that money and technology will meet needs for decades. But oil and gas industry data show:

• A clear, 40-year trend of less and less discovery of oil. (See graph at top of this page.)
• In regions including USA, the North Sea, Norway, New Zealand there is obvious decline of oil and gas.
• Global oil supply is 70% from pre-1972 wells
• Steadily decreasing output from the existing wells.
• Big military takeovers of oil & gas resources.

Timing and severity

• North America’s gas supply: Start of decline: about 2003 – 2004. Electricity is 20% gas-powered. Grid blackouts, brownouts in North American workplaces, cities, homes, Internet system, economy. Importing gas is seriously constricted by lack of ships and suitable port equipment.
• Global oil supply: ‘Conventional’ (easy-to-extract) oil: Decline from about 2005 on. Expect higher prices not only for fuels, but all goods and services because all require energy to create and deliver them.
  ‘Unconventional oil’ (Expensive deep sea, polar, etc): Decline about 3% a year  from 2009 on.
• Competition: Prices are affected by fierce global competition for oil and gas. Scarcity for one kind of energy also raises the price of the other forms, such as electricity or coal.
• Duration of decline: Forever. Oil and gas took millions of years to form, in extremely rare conditions. Regeneration rate is practically zero.

World now consumes four barrels of oil for each barrel discovered

• Barrels consumed globally/year: 28 billion (2002).
• Barrels discovered globally per year: 6 billion of “conventional” plus 8 billion deep sea, oil sands etc. Discovery of oil fluctuates each year, but peaked in the 1960s, and has declined at an average of about 9 billion barrels per year over the past 40 years.
• Pre-1973-discovered oil in use today: More than 70% of present global supply. We’ve mostly just been using up huge old oil fields.
   

Those figures, & the above graph of discoveries are at http://dieoff.org/page85.htm  and http://dieoff.org/page90.htm

Proportion of global energy provided by oil

• In developed countries 40% (1997)

Inadequacy of Expected Solutions

The “invest more to find it” idea

Yet-to-be located oil, globally

After a century of exploration, the earth’s geology and oil resources are generally well known. When the fields are emptying, money only helps to scrape out the hard-to-reach remainder. There are 210 billion barrels left to discover and 1000 billion barrels left to extract. This is indicated by the 40-year decline in discovery of oil. No amount of money will create oil that simply isn’t there.

Number of oil wells already in world/USA

More than 500,000. In USA, 80% of the wells now produce less than three barrels a day.

Percentage of oil recovered from a typical oil well

20% to 60%. It relates primarily to the viscosity of the oil. You get less from a heavy oil than a light one because it sticks in the reservoir.

“Technology will solve it” idea

Challenge to technology

To compensate for the expected 3% oil decline (at today’s 28 billion barrels a year), create and install, by year 2009, permanent supplies of portable energy, equivalent to 840 million barrels of oil a year. Then as oil keeps declining forever, increase this new energy it until it replaces 40% of the world’s oil  supply (22 billion barrels a year) OR reduce energy demand equivalently as the global population increases by almost a quarter million people every day.

The “better efficiency” idea

Increases in efficiency usually fail to reduce consumption (more m.p.g. just causes people to travel more or buy two cars, or other goods) unless they are personally determined to reduce energy consumption.

What about nuclear power?

Nuclear supplies 16% of the world’s electricity. Its ability to soften the oil and gas crash is problematic:

• Past accidents. Risk of more, and terrorism.
• Many more reactors would be needed, at huge cost, against local opposition.
• Tons of radioactive materials to transport at risk to public.
• Nuclear waste disposal is still the major, unresolved problem, especially breeder reactors producing plutonium – a nuclear weapon/terrorist raw material, half-life contamination is 24,000 years.
• All abandoned reactors are radioactive for decades or millennia.
• Nuclear is not directly suitable for aircraft and vehicles.
• Adapting nuclear to make hydrogen or other fuels would be a huge, and energy-expensive project.
• Nuclear fusion is still not available, after 40 years’ research and billions of dollars invested.

Note from Feed the Future.  Obama is considering bringing two nuclear plants to Georgia in spite of all the evidence above.

Natural gas

Proportion of global energy provided by gas

20% of global energy supply (1997).

Natural gas is also running short

Demand in North America is already outstripping supply, especially as power utilities take the remaining gas to generate electricity. Later in this web page there is a graph suggesting important effects of gas decline on the electricity used for computers, communications and control equipment.

Gas is not suited for existing jet aircraft, ships, vehicles, and equipment for agriculture and other products. Conversion consumes large amounts of energy and money. Natural gas also does not provide the huge array of chemical by-products that we currently get from oil.

Hydro-electric

Present use: 2.3% of global energy supply (1997). Many rivers are already exploited.

As a replacement for oil:

Very minor compared with 40% provided at present by oil. Unsuitable for aircraft and the present 800 million existing fuel-powered cars.

Coal

Current global use

24% of global energy supply.

As a replacement for oil

Is 50% to 200% heavier than oil per energy unit. Bulky and dirty. Expansion of coal mining, causes land ruin, and increases greenhouse gas emissions.

Hard to fine-control the rate of burn

Tuning the rate of burn of oil and gas fuels is easy, but coal is different. It is therefore is used in power stations to make electricity, wasting half of its energy content.

Coal mining operations run on oil fuels

Present coal-mining machinery and transportation runs not on coal, but on oil-based fuels.

Pollution

A single coal-fired station can produce a million tons of solid waste each year. Burning coal in homes pollutes air with acrid smog containing acid gases and particles. (Smog, greenhouse gases, and acid rain).

Liquid fuels from coal

Very inefficient, and huge amounts of water required.

Solar and wind

Global solar use

• Is about 0.006% of global energy supply. Energy varies constantly with weather or day/night. Not storable or portable energy like oil or natural gas so unsuited for present vehicles and industry. Batteries bulky, expensive, wear out in 5-10 years.
• Photovoltaic solar equipment (US$4/watt) is about 15% efficient, giving about 100 watts of the 1 kW per square meter exposed to bright sunshine (enough for one light bulb). A typical solar water panel array can deliver 50% to 85% of a home’s hot water though.
• Using some of our precious remaining crude oil as fuel to manufacture solar & wind equipment may be wise.

Global wind power use

0.07% of 1990 global energy supply. As with solar, energy varies greatly with weather, and is not portable or storable like oil and gas. Each wind turbine from Denmark produces an average of 698 kW averaged over a year.

Hydrogen

Current global use

US (only) 1998 consumption is 0.01% of global energy.

As a replacement for oil

• Hydrogen is currently manufactured as from natural gas, which is running short. It is therefore an energy “carrier” not a source.
• It can be produced in other ways, such as electrolysis, but always with a loss of the energy needed  to do that. Usually it is better to simply use the original energy directly.

Other sources of energy

Options

Shale, tar sand, coalbed methane, ethanol, biomass (from vegetation), etc.

Effectiveness as replacements for oil

• Huge investment in research and infrastructure to exploit them, plus large amounts of now-expiring oil supply.
• A major problem is that they cannot be exploited before the oil shocks cripple attempts to bring them on line, and the rate of extraction is far too slow to meet the huge global energy demand.

How It Will Affect Us

Food supply

Food production & delivery depends on oil

Food grains now contain between 4 and 10 calories of fossil fuel for every 1 calorie of solar energy. Example: 4% of USA’s energy budget is used to grow food, while 10 to 13 percent is needed to process it and transport it onto plates.

Fertilizers are made from natural gas. Grain yield without fossil fuel support can fall from 130 bushels/acre down to 30 bushels/acre. The worsening fuel shortages will make agriculture increasingly expensive and land-needy. Localizing agriculture closer to cities will help, as will more-vegetarian diets.

Efficiency

70% of all grain grown is used to feed animals for human consumption

The meat feeds 1/5 as many people as the grain could.

Number of cats & dogs in USA

131 million

Food given to pets

North American pet food business is $30 billion/yr, and is growing.

“Future food” being consumed by using gasoline in vehicles

Gasoline consumed ‘now’ will deprive future agriculture of energy for producing food.

Below are examples of how much “future food” a 30 mile-per-gallon vehicle is “eating” now. Also shown is the heavy physical labor humans will have to do in future when gasoline is unavailable for farm/industrial/office/home machinery:

• Bread, 1 kg loaf = 6 miles = one slice per 422 yards That 1/5 gallon = human heavy farm labor for 23 hrs.
• Beef, 1 kg = consumed by driving 76.2 miles That 2.5 gallon = human heavy farm labor 300 hrs.
• Canned corn 1 kg = consumed by driving 5.4 miles Again, 1/5 gallon = human heavy farm labor 20 hrs.

Transportation, Business, Globalization

Oil for transportation

• Automobiles, globally: 722 million
• Automobiles, USA: 132 million
• Trucks (all types) in USA: 1.5 million (all types) in USA:
• Buses: (all types) in USA:: more than 654,000
• Locomotives: USA: 26,000
• World aircraft fleet: 11,000 aircraft of more than 100 passengers. All 11,000 designed for oil-based fuel.
• World shipping: 85,000 ships in world.
• Decked fishing boats in the world: 1.2 million

Globalization

Will end. (Fuel costs & scarcity).

Oil for industry

Construction industry example: Energy to build an energy-efficient home is equivalent to 6,500 gallons of gasoline.

Number of by-products of oil

Over 500,000 including fertilizers, medicines, lubricants, plastics (computers, phones, shower curtains, disposables, toys, etc.), asphalt (roading and roofs), insulation, glues/paints/ caulking, (modern synthetic rubber) tires and boots, carpets, synthetic fabrics/clothing, stockings, insect repellent.

Government Services, Economy

City drinking water, government services

• Number of cities in the world: over 55,000
• Services to consider: Water supply pumping, sewage disposal, garbage disposal, street/park maintenance, hospitals & health systems, police, fire services. National defense (land, sea, air).
• Possibility of wars over remaining oil.

Economy and employment

• International oil import costs: Sharp rises (increasing global competition for dwindling oil & gas of five Middle-Eastern countries and former Soviet Union. International tensions.
• National debt, inflation: Money goes out of country, to oil producers. Money gets scarce. Interest/mortgages rise. Government prints more money to pay overseas energy bills. Money devalues. Inflation. Prices rise.
• Poverty: Public, and businesses become poorer paying higher energy costs. Less spending, less sales. Layoffs. Unemployment.
• Welfare costs up, taxes up. Therefore taxes up. Pensions for aging/disabled reduced or discontinued, and devalued by inflation.

Migration

• People will migrate away from hardship into less uncomfortable areas. Locally, regionally, globally.

Other serious quality-of-life aspects

• Heating and cooling: In cold regions oil heats buildings (burned as fuel in homes or in oil-fired electric power stations). In hot areas oil power provides air conditioning. As natural gas is substituted for oil, the gas price will rise too.
• Smog: Energy price and shortages will increase wood and coal burning in homes, increasing city smog.

Why Public Warning is so Late

Normal business and political posturing

For business and political reasons, there have been very misleading reports of sizes of stocks of oil:

(a) By firstly understating discoveries, and then later overstating discoveries, oil companies have given the false, but pleasing impression of an increasing discovery trend. Investors respond accordingly, and finance more exploration.

(b) The seven major oil-extracting countries have for years reported unchanged reserves (even though they were extracting and selling billions of barrels of oil, and that the reserves would therefore be less each year). See table of “spurious reserve revisions” shown below.

(c) In 1988 five of those countries claimed they each had about twice as much reserve oil as in 1987. See graph below, based on tables from < http://www.hubbertpeak.com/campbell/images/com12.gif >.

d) We, the public have enjoyed using up the gasoline, heating oil, plastics, and countless other oil products for decades. The oil kept flowing generously. We “looked on the bright side” and mostly ignored warnings by environmentalists that fossil fuels would run out. Media constantly announced new oil discoveries, and increasing stocks of oil. Emptying wells seemed decades in the future. Nobody planned for it. Now they really are running empty.

(e) OPEC countries need to earn as much oil revenue as possible to support rapidly growing populations where the public health care, education and other services are provided free, from oil revenues, not by taxes. They seem especially frightened of alternative energy sources, even though when examined closely, those alternative sources are drastically too small to compensate for oil. “As a group of fossil fuel exporters, OPEC stands to lose more than most from any proposals that threatens to cut oil consumption,” – Rilwanu Lukman, the Secretary General of OPEC, speaking at the 16th World Petroleum Congress, Calgary, 2000. (Globe & Mail Newspaper, June 5, 2000.)

Economic theory says exhausted resources always replaced

Economists have taught us the illusory theory that market demand will always generate suitable solutions. This ignores any physical limitations of the earth, human resourcefulness, or time needed. Example quote:

“Minerals are inexhaustible and will never be depleted. A stream of investment creates additions to proved reserves, a very large in-ground inventory, constantly renewed as it is extracted… How much was in the ground at the start and how much will be left at the end are unknown and irrelevant.” 

 Feed the Future note – BULL 

That is from Professor of Economics, Emeritus, Morry Adelman, who has long been one of the world’s foremost energy and resource economists and a leading analyst of international oil and gas markets. The quote is on page xi of his book, The Economics of Petroleum Supply, M.A. Adelman, published 1993.

 They lied to us

Certain countries reported that oil stocks were “not declining”, even though oil was being taken out, steadily emptying the wells.

Certian countries spectacularly increased the reported quantities of oil in stock, so that OPEC would recognize them as bigger suppliers and allow them to export more, increasing revenues. They were desperately competing with each other to make up their revenue by having a bigger slice of market share, because the price per barrel had plunged to about $12 per barrel.

The history graph of the information on all this prices is at  http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/chron.html

What You Can Do

Feed The Future Note - If your local town has a transition organisation, join it.  If not, start one.   Get together with your community to increase community and local fortitude and work together to create ‘energy descent’.   Look up transition towns on google.

Personal preparations

Reduce energy dependence of family, home, lifestyle. The less fuels and goods you consume, the less affected you will be..

Workplace

Observe, reduce energy need. Talk with friends, workmates, neighborhood, city, governments. The ideal use for remaining oil and mineral reserves is into industries that create inexhaustible alternative energy equipment like windmills, solar water heaters, biomass (vegetation that creates fuels), etc.

Share your feeling with others

Try to stay positive and active rather than ignore it or blame people for it. Where there’s life there’s hope, especially if we all collaborate and are creative.

“It’s not that new”. Humans have always faced hardships, and many among us do so constantly now. Learn from them.

Possible emergency measures to consider

• Alert the public so people understand the energy decline and cooperate to adapt to it. This includes alerting your city council and local media, the government. Everyone needs to collaborate, at all levels.
• Prepare the community for conserving and rationing of dwindling fuels & oil/gas-derived products.
• Discontinue projects that assume abundant fuel, such as road widening, overseas trade
• Re-localize life, business. Un-globalize
• Relocate food production nearer to cities
• Feed the Future note- learn about permaculture and how you can create forest food gardens that contain all nutrients for health and wellness and will in a few years supply YOU and your family or community AND have surplus
• If you already have children, STOP NOW Population control IS VITAL to prevent children being born into extremely harsh conditions that seem likely, and to conserve soon-scarce resources for those already alive.
• Reconsider immigration, which adds load – Feed the Future Note - don’t run off somewhere else, it’ll be the same everywhere.
• Strengthen the police and army to deal with social chaos & to control distribution of  supplies. Feed the Future Note

  – we don’t agree with this. Strengthen your own defences and start to care and share, make sure you have your own community supplies and encourage other communities to do so, sharing with those nearest to you.

• Alert national leaders to organize well against this major threat that faces us all.  Feed The Future Note – this was written in 2003.  Our sense now is that national leaders are not interested in taking the measures we need because they are too concerned about securing resources for the moneyed few. THEY WILL NOT HELP US WE MUST HELP OURSELVES.

Feed the Future – additional info on what to do

1. Start shifting your lifestyle now into a more ‘return 2 earth’ simpler one.  Research how to do this. (Adapting to new ways of life takes time and effort so it’s to your advantage to start now). Repurpose, Recycle, ReUse, Refuse to buy stuff that travels thousands of miles to get to your table or home

2. Learn new skills in order to become as self-sufficient as possible; in terms of food, water, energy, and personal transport.

That means a large productive community/ home vegetable garden and more particularly a permaculture style food forest garden to compensate for reduced commercial food production and higher prices.  Start canning and preserving food.   Get yourself an emergency food supply.  Investigate  renewable energy generation – get a wind tower or some solar panels.   Start to conserve water by adding water catchment systems to your home.   Change your water outlet system so that greywater [from sinks, bathrooms [not toilets] and kitchens flow into your garden

3. Promote community re-localization to your family, friends, neighbors, colleagues and community leadership; reducing your dependency on long-distance supply chains. Redirect your purchases toward locally produced agriculture and goods, local services, and local and decentralized energy production.

4. Reduce or eliminate your fossil fuel use as much as possible, especially for transportation — use mass transit, bike, or walk. Work closer to home. Support alternative, renewable fuels. Increase the energy efficiency of your home. Withdraw support for further development of highways, urban sprawl, and large personal vehicles.

5. WARNING  If you wait to start preparing, the resources you need or the conditions you count on to adapt may be exhausted, too expensive, or no longer viable. For example, if you wait until things get tough to trade in your SUV for a hybrid or plug-in car, there may not be any left (due to demand), and there may be no one willing to take that SUV in trade.

Prepare Yourself NOW

Order a year’s supply of freeze dried food, buy a solar oven,  get batteries to see you through in times of power outages.  These items are designed  to keep you going while you transition into a more local, self sufficient, regenerative lifestyle .  Be prepared for emergencies and for the future NOW.

Pass this document on to everyone you know.   Talk to people everywhere.
More Information and Contacts

Documented evidence

You can obtain two versions of this document “The Oil & Gas Crash and You”:

• “Shorter Version”, available as a two-sided, one-sheet handbill that you can give to other people (It contains most of the contents of this web page). < http://www.geocities.com/RunningOnEmptyNZ/_FactSheet.doc
• “Full version”, a 12-page resource for researchers and journalists, containing extra references and authorities, and more explanations and links. http://www.geocities.com/RunningOnEmptyNZ/OCAY19.doc

Websites

• http://www.hubbertpeak.com/duncan/olduvai2000.htm   The Peak of World Oil Production and the Road to the Olduvai Gorge,by Richard C. Duncan, Ph.D. Pardee Keynote Symposia Geological Society of America Summit 2000 Reno, Nevada November 13, 2000.

This paper suggests that decline of natural gas may be the most disastrous event from year. 2007 (or sooner, see updates) because of resultant shortage of electricity for computers, communications and control equipment.

The following sites are conveniently keyword-searchable for research. They have lots of scientific and oil industry literature about energy resources and the ecology generally. They are heavily annotated with authoritative references and links:

• http://www.hubbertpeak.com/  Named after the late Dr. M. King Hubbert, geophysicist, this website provides data, analysis and recommendations regarding the upcoming peak in the rate of global oil extraction.

•  http://www.dieoff.org/ This untidy, emotional site is nevertheless a very large, valuable resource. It’s full of reputable energy-related and environment-related reports and papers, conveniently assembled in one place by researcher Jay Hanson.
• www.oilcrash.com is a New Zealand activist website operated by Robert Atack. It is especially useful for downloading audio and video recordings of the world’s most prominent speakers as they notify the public about the decline of oil and gas, and the implications.

Discussion forum – Technical/scientific

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/energyresources  (restricted membership at about 450, to prevent newcomers posting material already discussed, but there are ten thousand previous postings keyword searchable.)

Discussion forum – Implications, action

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/RunningOnEmpty2 which is the current discussion group.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/RunningOnEmpty which is now closed, but there are ten thousand previous postings in the archives for researchers by keyword search. Monitored the energy decline by featuring news items about it, and discussed countless implications at personal and societal level. Membership by request to bthomson@e3.net.nz.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/RunningOnEmpty2OnEmpty2  After 10,000 messages in RunningOnEmpty, this group has continued the discussion, reserving the original egroup as a VIP conference egroup, and as an archive.

Author of “The Oil & Gas Crash and You”

Bruce Thomson, author of this article is  a technical writer in Palmerston North, New Zealand. He moderated the original RunningOnEmpty group, and is the moderator of that RunningOnEmptyNZ2internet forum.

There is no institutional financial sponsoring or influence of Bruce Thompson’s  page or the forum.

Some moral authority to expose the Convince Sheet to the public was gained. After weeks of debate (3,100 forum message) there was a poll of 280 members. We all knew the announcement would be disturbing, with possibly serious impacts on the public, the stock market and general business and personal confidence. Of those 280 polled, 62 members responded, and over 85% of them voted in favor of exposing the truth.

Perceived advantages of informing the public were

• People might cooperate better with governments, instead of innocently demanding more energy or insisting on lower fuel taxes (As fuel imports cost more and more, cutting taxes will just impoverish governments, and cause cuts in services like health care, education and social welfare. A great deal of energy conservation is possible, and is a better solution.)
• People can make correct decisions for themselves personally (to have less children, plan cheaper transport, safer jobs, pay off debts, consume less, conserve energy more, etc.
• All the cleverest minds and wisest leaders of the world could work on the problem. With them helping, and an understanding public, we might fare better than if everyone continues innocently wasting the remaining energy and bringing the oil and gas crash to us faster and sooner.

You may copy freely to others…

• This web page (you can refer people to it: http://www.geocities.com/RunningOnEmptyNZ   
• ‘The Oil &Gas Crash and You’ files. This shorter one, and the full version are downloadable at… http://www.geocities.com/RunningOnEmptyNZ/OCAY19SHORT.doc  http://www.geocities.com/RunningOnEmptyNZ/OCAY19.doc

• http://www.geocities.com/RunningOnEmptyNZ/OCAY19.doc http://www.geocities.com/RunningOnEmptyNZ/OCAY19.doc

There are no political or commercial allegiances associated with this document it was created as a personal enquiry, and in the public interest.

© 2010, Sunny Soleil. All rights reserved but relaxed Pierre Soleil We like to pass on the word so YOU are welcome to use this document in accordance with the Creative Commons license. That is, you can tweet, facebook, repost, excerpt and even adapt it so long as you don’t pretend it’s yours for commercial purposes

A community forest garden is a vital cog in the wheel of transition, that we must inevitably spin into. It is a transition from oil based consumption and materialistic lifestyles and emerge into simple satisfaction, self-sufficiency, self-reliance, local sustainability and smaller group inter-dependence. 

There’s no doubt that big changes are pushing their heads above ground and that we must begin now to prepare.  If we do we WILL ride this wave and emerge refreshed and renewed.. landing on new shores of potential. 

To us, as long time observers of the social shifts, it does seem that we, today, are present to a crumbling of ‘what was’ and an emergence into a new way. 

As information spreads and things seem to happen much much more quickly [people can connect, share ideas, start groups, research through the internet] more people are aware.   Ideas are beginning to synchronize like women who live together experiencing their menstrual cycles synching with each other.  

We are being pushed towards finding creative alternatives for our basic needs which are safety, shelter, food, wellness and connection to other from intimate, family, friends, neighbors into the community and beyond.

And it seems that the place to begin is really at grass roots, one or two people, adding more as the idea spreads, neighbor to neighbor, neighbor to community, community to other communities…and our role exists within our individual community yet as part of the entire whole…ain’t that cool!

 Forest Food Gardens are one part of the great web of emergence.  It is one [jolly good]  way of ensuring abundant, localized community  food and wellness.

Natural Building methods and all the variants thereof offer effective, localized, low cost and resource friendly solutions to providing shelter for all

Shared Land in the form of people offering parts of their land for community shelter/food growing spaces knowing that they will be supported and helped by the community as their generosity melts the divide between have’s and have not’s..

Shared Labor in the form of people working on projects and knowing that they will be fed and sheltered as they help create an abundant world for future generations not just for themselves.

Free energy solutions from those who are fascinated by experimenting with solar/wind, magnetic, water and whatever power.  Like this we can step over the  spirallingly expensive grid electricity and gas-fuelled transportation.

Connection to Other and Community  is the spirit that fuels us to come together and pool our resources, ideas and skills. It is also the spirit that connects one community to another and thus springs the spider network of local communities, trading, bartering, sharing, caring helping….

Living v Working to Live.  In living we bypass the ’middle man’.   Instead of going to work for someone to earn ‘money’ to pay for heat, light, food, entertainment, transport and keeping up with ‘them’, we will expend our energy on living.  

We forsee that there will be a shift towards people using their ‘time’ to dig, plant and tend food forests, collect herbs and concoct tinctures, preserve and prepare food, collect wood, tend the fires, build homes, care for the livestock, school the children…..

This alone would consitute a good enough ‘work’ day. The fruit of your labor is the home, the eggs,the warmth, the nutrition, the healing and the children delighting in playing in ‘secret’ hidey hole under the large fruit bushes. 

We are going to have to learn to make do with less, be more independent and self-sustaining, become more hardy and resiliant and come up with creative ways to utilize what we do have in abundance.

And thankfully, something we humans have in abundance is the ability to transcend through adversity via creativity and soar to heights of magnificence and when we pull together.   The evidence is there.

Past Evidence of the Great Human Spirit

A friend’s mother who grew up in the Great Depression of the 30′s said to us the other day ‘I don’t know what all the fuss is about the ‘great depression’ and how people had to live – that’s the way we’d always lived.    Rural folk know how to survive, how to adapt, make-do and use the natural resources. And they know how to pull together as a community from taking food to bereaved neighbors to sharing the surplus of their gardens with those less well off.   They had no other choice.  It was live off the land or die!  And they had a sense of caring for their community.

Anyone in the UK who knows someone who is in their 80′s will have heard tales of how they managed in the 40′s WW2.   Food shortages, nightly bombings in big cities, people being made homeless in an instant were all part of their everyday reality.  A woman recalls how living rurally they had lots of orchards. During WW2 her father dug up the orchards, by himself with the help of a neighbor’s son and planted vegetables that he gave away to locals so that they would have fresh food to eat.

Riding the Wave of Transition Together

So how do we begin to energize a transition wave in our community.   And before you get all scared about official stuff, there is none.   One of the pleasures of living in the rural South is that people just do things… they aren’t too fussed about what the officials think.    They don’t get all bogged down in ‘what about the codes’ or ‘you can’t do that’.  

Here are some initial guidelines…

1.  We have to find our bliss, the thing we love doing that fit into this new kind of living

2.  We may need to develop new skills or link together with others to pool our skills

3.  We have to work with the greater good in mind, knowing that we will be taken care of as long as we are genuine and doing the right thing

4.  We can’t just sit around talking, we have to start doing NOW.  We’ve talked a lot over the last year about how it is and what’s going on and now we are acting.  We went out into the world and connected and followed the leads and found the like-minded energies and we asked for connections, help, guidance…and it comes in

5. We have to be prepared for a bumpy ride as we shift gears, but we must also allow ourselves to experience the vision of living a more natural, earth-based, community centred life… and all the joys that it brings.   There really is nothing like good honest labor to have that feeling of being in the moment and alive. 

 The increasing research and talk around global warming, carbon footprints, oil running out aka post-peak oil combined with evident economic challenges [to use a mildly inoffensive word] and price-hikes everywhere is making a pretty LOUD statement.They are the result of people waking up and getting that we can’t go on living the way we do.

Across the globe people are preparing for transition. There’s even official transition sites and examples of what people in communities are doing to create a more earth-based less oil dependent life.

Forest Food Gardens are part of a transition initiative that is designed to help communities become less reliant on oil derivatives which includes all manufactured items, electrical goods, grid lighting and heating, truck/plane/rail transported food and more reliant on producing what they need for themselves within the community.

THIS is NOT THAT

Please don’t start to label this and compare it to any political movement.  It is not that way.  This is NOT that other ‘c’ word.  It is about human challenges, emergence, freedom and working together and finding creative solutions.

We don’t just need to create food, we need to find ways to harness free energy, build affordable or even free shelter, utilize our land for the community, share our labor and the fruits of that collective labor.  And NO this is NOT anything like the com****** word.    That was awful.   That system was heirarchical and worse still hypocritical. This is something COMPLETELY DIFFERENT.

This can and will become a global initiative.  The global initiative will not be orchestrated at global level.  It will consist of each individual playing the instrument they play best and all coming together in harmony with others to allow community initiatives to unfold.  We like to think of this transition as a harmonic emergence of humans, a return to earth.  H.E.R.E.

More on the topic of Community Transition

Transition 2 – The just do it’s 12 steps to creating a self-organizing community initiative coming soon

How to set an initiative in motion and avoid energy sapping bureaucracy whilst surprizing and then  inspiring the authorities with what you all achieve.

© 2010, Sunny Soleil. All rights reserved but relaxed Pierre Soleil We like to pass on the word so YOU are welcome to use this document in accordance with the Creative Commons license. That is, you can tweet, facebook, repost, excerpt and even adapt it so long as you don’t pretend it’s yours for commercial purposes

“A single, seemingly powerless person who dares to cry out the word of truth and to stand behind it with all his person and all his life, ready to pay a high price, has surprisingly greater power, though formally disfranchised, than do thousands of anonymous voters.”    Havel  – Artist and Revolutionary Leader Czechosolvakia

These rare and divinely inspired people  emerge in every generation.   They are ahead of their times , they see the world as it could be and  they fight for that dream, knowing the risks.  At every turn they know they may be blocked and yet they continue. 

To Boldly Go

Driven by some divine inspiration, they fear neither death, imprisonment, poverty or disenfranchisement because their own interest is secondary to the driver to contribute to a better world for now and in the future.   They are the Star Trek pathfinders.

They open people’s senses to what is really going on and they shine a light on the path to what’s possible.  And it is through the memory of their bravery in standing up and being counted that we find our own strength .

What would you give your life to?

 Is there some idea, cause, belief that you would devote your life to ?  We can only ponder under what circumstances we would stand up, be counted and face the direst consequences of breaking out of current thinking paradigms.             

Every day we are being asked to make a choice.  We are given the choice to support that which we don’t agree with or to stand up and say ‘I challenge this’.

Being True to YOU

There’s an episode of House, the 4^th Season, where one of the candidates for a position in the dept of diagnostic medicine under House agreed with House’s diagnosis  even though he was sure House was wrong.   Why? He was being filmed for a TV documentary.  He said later that it would ruin his chances of a career if his future employers saw him being disagreeable. 

Of course the character evolves as his ‘shameful’ secret is revealed and he is no longer able to hide behind the mask he created.   Through this process he learns to stand up and accept himself and value his opinions…  He becomes honest, he dares to differ and as a result House hires him.   He’s also a damned fine diagnostician!

Do The Right Thing

We all have our own sense of integrity of what is the right thing to do and what is not.  The Native Americans have the ‘one law’.   The law is to always consider other and the greater good in every action we take.   I’d add another ‘rule’.      Follow your deepest fascinations and that which you feel naturally drawn to do.   Like this we can evolve.

Insinuation v Revolution

Every day we have opportunities to do the right thing.  And sometimes the right thing is not always direct protest.

 Because there are times when it is more effective to  flow with the system gently the way the water soaks into the earth nurturing and reviving it and encouraging new growth by just being water and doing what water is meant to do.   

Follow Your Fascinations

We all have purpose, meaning and a unique set of gifts that are our contribution to the world.   When we follow our fascinations, our joy and our bliss we will sow the seeds for the future through our unique contribution to the world.

 Dream the World Into Being

In the midst of these seemingly chaotic and exoponentially, rapidly evolving times, did you ever stop to wonder what kind of world you’d like to leave behind for the next generation and the next and the next and what unique gift you have to offer the future?   

The Venus Project

Jacque Fresco did.  This 83 year old French designer and futurist, dreamed a design for a world that is technologically and socially possible, fair to and respectful of all life, virtually crime free and where law is not necessary.  This world is a paradise of creativity and technological evolution for the betterment of all mankind and the entire system we are part of…

 Proposal for A New World

Wanna know what he has proposed?  

www.thevenusproject.com  An amazing design for the future

 www.thezeitgeistmovement.com  Join with others to create a world fit for all life, present and future  more than 250,000 members worldwide.   

PS Even if this world does not come into being in our time here on earth, imagine what seeds of potential we can sow for the generations to come.

PPPS We are tenants of this earth and there is an unspoken harmonic agreement that says in return for our tenancy we agree to leave the property in good shape for the next tenants.

© 2009, return2earth. All rights reserved but relaxed Pierre Soleil We like to pass on the word so YOU are welcome to use this document in accordance with the Creative Commons license. That is, you can tweet, facebook, repost, excerpt and even adapt it so long as you don’t pretend it’s yours for commercial purposes