Another plug for George Soros.

You really need to watch this.

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/10102008/watch.html

It is interesting. . .

To see the flurry of thoughts and ideas bouncing around out there. More and more every day we seem to hear about the crisis of confidence we face as a society towards the trust we have in each other and our institutions. This crisis in confidence is clearly well founded. Unfortunately, the response seems to be the formation of large numbers of groups out there--all seemingly saying "Trust us! We're building new institutions!" Certainly I'm familiar with the Venus Project, all that Zeitgiest stuff, of course the Large Cap Seasteading guys, and all that. They are very fine at drawing all sorts of nice pictures about what they're going to build. I understand the temptation. When I was in 2cd grade or thereabouts, I was all caught up in UFO's and spaceships and must have drawn blueprints for hundreds. I would proudly show off my plan for a new spaceship with nice little drawing of people growing food in boxes and gymnasiums, and of course somewhere was a squigly device with pumps and smoke that was, the "fusion engine"--or so I'd sagely reply. In fact, they looked a lot like the stuff you will see over there at the Venus Project. In fact, they have one very critical characteristic that is identical. They were, stictly, daydreams. To suggest that such a thing could be built is a entirely differnet issue than will it. Of course anything can hypothetically be built. If we focus on, strictly that which will be built, or on lifestyles that will exist, suddenly the whole picture and the task at hand becomes immediate. We need to get started, immediately, on the immediately beneficial, and the immediately achievable. This is the sole way to a better future.

Of course, central to the issue as well is this. It is a complete waste of time to daydream about ways we personally could live. We must focus on what changes we will make. This and only this engenders progress. It is no good saying that I'm not being visionary enough, or whatever. Visionary thinkers we have no shortage of. We need heroes. We need people that act. Here is our crisis. There is simply no way to anticipate what sorts of options move from the hypothetical world of the possible to the world of the accessible once one has made real steps in that direction. Unfortunately, we have people planning what they will do upon arrival without even lacing up their boots.

Allow me to state the obvious: It isn't visionary in the slightest unless a wholesale attack and complete rejection of materialism as core social value is not central to the vision. It isn't a credible vision, in the slightest, unless real concrete steps towards that vision are evident.

. . .And lastly, none of this will mean a damn thing to you unless these visions and actions aren't personal. . .

Our new institutions will not be formed. They will arise. What they will arise from is the amalgam of each and all of our manifest values and actions. If you want to change the world, get started planting that garden.

If you haven't seen it. . .

http://www.palinaspresident.us/

Click on the phone, you'll figure it out.

Epiphany

Tonight, again raining lightly and chill. Certainly the weather has changed in the last week. I imagine we'll get a couple of weeks yet of good weather before it really comes on, but "summer" is clearly over.

Tonight, cooking on the rocket stove a curry of taro(out of the garden, lauloa ele'ele omao, and I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong on the variety!) with local onions and local beef. The rockets stove is happly sucking away buring construction scraps. It's very quiet. I type at the computer with the battery bank nicely full. Ran the generator today to power the wirefeed welder, and the whole house is powered up if the fuel gets burned.

Cool outside but toasty in the cabin, and dead silent except for the pop or two of a stick and the hard pat of rain on the roof and the softer hiss of the same on the ferns.

This, of course, is the simplicity we seek manifest.

Of course it wasn't simple in the slightest to achieve it. How soon we all forget that.

So the epiphany. Everybody wants to live a simple life. Everybody tries, according to their definition of it. No one wants a life full of drugery, stress, pain, worries, and confrontations. No one who isn't pathalogical, anyhow. The problem is simply this--people simply don't know how to go about it.

This is compounded, of course, by the fact that the majority of what is out there marketed with the idea of making life simpler is really just someting being sold for the sole purpose of enriching the seller--making HIS life simpler with a fatter account, but that's about it.

Certainly when you see people plowing away after the big house--a lot of it, at least hypothetically, is that more living space eases tensions in a family, and the house itself is an investment that will pay off with better living down the road. Really? When you see expensive cars it's that they are safer in a collision and are more reliable. Really? When you see people with acid refux and irritable bowel syndrom pulling their hair out trying to get ahead in a "career" the only the reason they do so is so that the income that they will achieve will allow them, at some point, at least, to take a step or two back and maybe a vacation in Bali. . .really. . .

Well, I'm sure most everyone in the developed world is questioning those assumptions at least a little bit at the moment.

With the exception of people who are stunted, and there are more than a handful of those, who can only function in environments with very high levels of stimulation--you've got a brute creature which is nothing more than a bit of human colored spray paint on a brain stem--one that simply has nothing in its head without the racket of roaring motors or the company of bouncing clowns. . .except for those. . .the sane among us only miss out on a life of simplicy and sanity not because of a lack of desire, but because of a lack of hope, skills, and honest guidence.

This is where the responsibility comes in. If you know something, share it. Give it away. We must achieve a critical mass of people who do live in this manner. Unfortunately, most who would desire to live so give it such a bad go that their lifestyles effectively are near indecernable from those who simply don't give a damn about anything but the next fix, whatever it is. This gives a disproportial sense of real values of society--and sells us short.

Moringa

When you start reading about this plant, its uses, and its qualities, you simply must stop for a moment and ask: can this really be true? It is really such a valuable plant that it's difficult to believe that the various claims can possibly be true.

Apparently, they are. I'm sold on the evidence and planted some today. I'll keep everyone posted on how it goes. I see no reason why it should not, and it's widely grown in Hawaii anyway.

This very useful website has a lot of information about moringa, its uses, and propagation methods. As far as I'm concerned anyone who could swing growing it ought to give it a whirl. At least look into it. It's very possibly the most nutritional plant on earth.

http://www.treesforlife.org/our-work/our-initiatives/moringa

This video is pretty good as well.

http://video.yahoo.com/watch/121059/904163

Something Else That Can Get In the Way of Simplicity

This sent to me today. God, so funny I near pee'd myself. Sigh. . .

I take it she thought moving out of the "cage" and back to the "Savannah" wasn't such a hot idea.

We need to work on this kind of getting along a bit too, I expect.

Homesteading meets Seasteading--the base of operations

Those out there living the lifestyle are going to need to sink or swim here. One is going to need to get that boat ready and be pretty creative, I expect, if things keep rolling in the manner they are.

Part of the reason that I came to Hawaii and the Hilo area in general is that Hilo bay is unquestionably the most important port in the Pacific for a Seasteading lifestyle. It is more or less undeveloped, with minimal congestion, and is a relatively easy more or less all weather entrance accessible for a windjammer, even a large one. As well, it's shaping up very rapidly that the Big Island is the only island in the mid Pacific that has the capacity to maintain sensible agriculture, and there's really only going to be one place to get real stores. If the climate models are correct, most of Mexico, especially the Sea of Cortez region may be more or less an ultra arid dead zone. Many of the smaller islands will be in the same place. The Big Island as well will suffer, but it's still big enough that there will remain productive patches in certain areas. While the Pacific Northwest looks good at the moment, the population density is simply too high, it's too expensive yet to make agriculture sensible, and drought in the Cascades, with snowless winters is going to be the norm.

At this point I'm missing only one of the traditional "canoe plants" that voyagers stocked their ships with, and I'm getting very close to being able to produce useful quantities for voyaging boats. Anyone who has their foot in the Pacific rim and are looking to a long term future take note!

The day of making a living in the Pacific as a small time trader is very nearly back. You've got a chance to get it all together here soon with a bad economy and cheap oil for the next couple of years. We have learned how expensive it can get and how fast. We also know what levels of costs it takes to break the economy's back--and that's about 150 bucks a barrel. Less than I would have expected, but it's a known now. Way too close for comfort!

Jerry Konanui

Had the amazing pleasure this morning of a visit by Jerry Konanui, perhaps the most knowledgeable taro expert in Hawaii. Jerry is Aloha incarnate. Certainly he is a very fine example of the fact that most people who really know what they're doing are invariably very gracious and generous with their knowledge. Needless to say, I learned a great deal about taro and canoe plants in general and was pleased to receive the affirmation that I was doing a good job with the whole project. Certainly his opinion matters more to me than many.

Looks like we'll be building a rocket stove down at his place pretty soon! I really need to put a class together on building these things, as everyone that sees it wants one. . .does someone want to put that together? Let me know. My neighbor is a very fine steel fabricator and has a couple of kids, and I try to kick all the work to him I can. I'll get a bid from him for what delivered components would cost in the next day or two. Elsewise it's my wirefeed welder and and a sawsall, but it works too.

The Biggest Obstacle to Simple Living

Simple living isn't necessarily easy. At the moment the biggest problem for many is access to health care.

Many of you who know me know I suffer from psoriasisitic arthritis. Dealing with it has been an ongoing hassle for the last decade, and that issue hasn't gone away. Since I lost my health care coverage in a divorce a while back I now contend with the pre-existing condition issue, so independent health insurance simply isn't an option. Neither is paying for the treatment out of pocket. We're looking at a protocol that would cost better than 30000 dollars a year. The condition comes and goes, at times it's bad enough that it's painful to drive a car, so you can imagine single-handing a 34000 pound engineless gaff cutter was difficult. I became very concerned that I could easily find myself somewhere in the world with a flareup, unable to handle the boat, unable to get treatment, and I'd likely have to simply walk off and leave the boat, losing 9/10ths of all I owned in the process. If I hadn't sold the boat, I guess I would have stuck with it, as there wasn't really any other option, but I certainly decided it was in my best interest to, if I could, diversify a bit to protect myself. I was in pretty rough shape at the time. Better today, actually, and thanks--but it's a every day thing. And fortunately the opportunities presented themselves for me to more or less keep my lifestyle. Necessity is a Mother.

Living a simple life requires compromises. You will have to pick and choose what it is you can afford and what you can go without. You will have to go without something. You will have to make some sort of deal with the devil, especially if you're of the economic class that deals with this sort of issue--which you probably are, or would have very little interest in anything I've got to say. It's not all bad. Since for my condition one of the most effective treatment protocols is hanging out on a beach in the sunshine, you may well see why I live where I do. For 30000 bucks I can do a lot of that.

This may well change. The Federal insurance plan would be a godsend for sure, especially as it would not concern itself with the "pre-existing" condition. Elsewise at the moment my only option is to work some crappy place, full time, for miserable wages, for most of a year--if the company hangs in there that long, and keeps offering the plan--if I get into trouble. It's not a happy prospect, but it's the only one out there, and I rightly need to keep that ace in the hole. Not happy about that, but, well, whatever.

Life is happens before you get sick. No one gets out of here alive.

Q=MT/H2

Quality of life might be measured as one's sum "Means" of "bounty" times the amount of "Time" one has to enjoy it, divided by the square of the amount of "Hassle" it takes to maintain it.

I think very soon people are going to look at affluence not by what it affords, but the problems it forestalls. I think we're just shellshocked by the ongoing concussions of the collapses of the institutions around us, and becoming very gunshy as a result. Soon, though, once the dust settles, it may be very quiet indeed.

Still the transition is going to be pretty difficult for many of us, and there will be a lot of uncertainty. I of course am aware and sensitive to this fact.

If the little pathway to my house over the pond looks like the entrance to a shrine, it's because it mostly is. With the craziness out there one cannot avoid, one will need to ladle on the sanity heavily indeed to keep a little balance in things.

Simplicity at its core is a process of evolution in design. In sciences, as in engineering, as in sailing, as in an self-actualized or engineered life. . .simplicity is the ultimate net result of process. Simplicity is efficiency. Simplicity is reliability. Simplicity is elegance. Simplicity is economy. Simplicity is not simple to achieve, but rather demands a systematic and relentless effort to perpetually pare away unnecessary complications, and to seek the highest return on investment per energy or capital expended. Central to this task requires targeting a very specific goal--what is the point of all this? This question must be asked, and answered, with the utmost of rigor. The slightest vagaries here preclude success.

So, what is it that you want out of all this?

This isn't a rhetorical question.