I’ve been watching more youtube videos.  This time, they’re about narcissism and CPTSD.  There’s a lot of gaslighting and crazymaking involved.  See, I have a history.  I’d love to say that my childhood was wonderful and nothing bad happened, but, I can’t.  I can’t because I have emotional flashbacks.  Figuring out the triggers is a bit difficult.

I never feel safe.  Not ever.  The safest I ever felt, was in the vacuum chamber of a particle accelerator, all alone.  Seriously.  MRI tubes are terrifically safe places for me, because there’s nobody in the room that can hurt me.  This means I can admit that I have social anxiety.  Crowds are scary.  I can admit that I have certain kinds of performance anxiety, though not others.  For the most part, I cope by suppressing the feelings.

Why, though?  Why is feeling trapped in a social situation much more frightening than being trapped and all alone?  Why would I rather be squished in a box than be stuck on an airplane with all of those passengers?  Why would I rather write a 500 page essay than give a 5 minute speech about a topic I’m passionate about?  I don’t have good answers that are easy to find.

My parents were not narcissists.  Yet, I can recall abusive episodes in my childhood which shaped me.  I think, but I’m not sure, my first sexual experience occurred when I was four years old.  #Metoo gets old, and no, it wasn’t my parents.  I told them, and they put a stop to it, well, at least for that person.  Still, it is the sort of thing that made me want to know for sure what the moral code was, and made me thirsty to know more information in general.  I hate it when people keep secrets from me.

Ah, but that was just the beginning.  See, I have lived by the moral code I’ve developed.  It’s an unwritten rule, set up young, that I should not be a bad person, that I should not hurt others.  It is a rule which, as an adult, I have found difficulty coping with.  It needs to be broken, and rewritten.  I’m tired of living with the heartache of being a doormat all because I have to be a good person and please my parents, even after all these years.

The old crones I’m facebook friends with have shown by example, that I need to develop my inner asshole.  I need to be able to be cruel and selfish, from time to time.  I need to be a bitchy witch at times, and I need practice at it.  That’s the source of the social anxiety: I’m still trying to please other people more than myself.  That plays out in a lot of different contexts.  A simple one is how much I should weigh.  Do I please my doctors and weigh within the normal BMI?  Do I please my husband and weigh what he wants me to weigh?  Do I please myself, and weigh what I want to weigh?  Will I feel safer if I’m more muscular?  Will I feel safer if I’m skinny or invisible or ugly?

To ground myself means to feel safe and comfortable in my own skin.  I feel like fading out, like curling up into a ball, whenever I remember the times I messed up, I made a mistake, and people were counting on me.  My memory is good, and I remember the emotions well.  Yes, I did mess up, and my mistakes impacted other people.  I wanted to make sure that never happened again, so I shun all responsibility over other people’s actions.  However, looking at that now, that’s not a mature response to the pain I still feel.

Perhaps you can suggest a healthier response?

“When are you going to solve peak oil?” asks a random stranger on the internet.  I must be getting old.  The answer to this one goes like this: “I’m not quite sure what you mean by “solve peak oil.” So, I’ll make something up and attribute it wrongly to you. When you said “solve peak oil,” you really meant solve the next extinction crisis and jump start civilization 2.0 with Georgia Guidestones levels of humans on the planet. (at this point, I’m interrupted rudely by a loud “THAT’S NOT WHAT I SAID!”) But see, I’m female, and in the culture wars, I’m allowed to interpret anything a male says as offensively as possible, and claim dominance hierarchy points by being the most offended person in the room. Therefore, if I say that that is what you said, then that is what 1 million women will claim that you said, even if you plainly didn’t.

Since catabolic collapse of industrial civilization is a “wicked problem” with no solution possible, perhaps the best solution is to collapse first and avoid the rush by blatant and ongoing infighting amongst those who stare at the data the most. Surely bankruptcy of public services and moderate levels of civil unrest could cause the nuclear reactors to scram well in advance of the vastly increased climate disruption events such as volcanoes, fracking earthquakes, tsunamis, and major flooding. Furthermore, a modest proposal could be made that those in the fedghettos could eat, well, soylent green, while their numbers are reduced via infertility.

Then again, perhaps we should embrace positive thinking for a change. Peak oil is not a problem, so much as an opportunity. This is the opportunity you’ve been waiting for! The breakdown of law and order on a local scale to commit all the illegal acts your soul has been pining away to perpetrate. Like, you know, collecting your own rainwater, or growing things, or (gasp) growing livestock where the city ordinances prohibit such things. Why, you could even focus on the basics of civilization: soup kitchens, hospitals, and schools. See, he who feeds you owns you. Clearly, the occupying government has no intention of feeding you, or providing adequate schooling, nor of providing adequate medical care. If you can provide these things within your community, free from taxation as much as possible, then your community will come up with the solution for the effects of peak oil on an ongoing basis, for as long as it can.”

If you caught all of the hidden references, you’re obviously corded, and need to crawl out of your apartment full of freeze-dried food stacked in the shape of a fallout bunker, and start a hiking and amateur astrology business.  Why is it that all of the conspiracy people who receive regular encrypted emails from high-ranking officials and business CEOs eventually get into astrology?  Is it because the Queen does?

See, peak oil is a wicked problem, and a single individual can not “solve” it.  You can cope with it.  You can organize your communities or go off into the woods alone.  You can protest or use direct action against oil drilling and transportation infrastructure.  You can’t stop peak oil any more than you can stop the stars from spinning up above the Earth (thanks Einstein), or the climate from changing, or Earthquakes from occurring.  You can’t stop the currency crisis, the germs from mutating and killing, the greedy from hoarding, the love and desperation in the mothers’ eyes as death walks the streets.  Whatever made you think that we should respond to our differing environments in the exact same way?  We can’t all move to isolated parts of the countryside, so therefore, don’t feel guilty if you don’t.  We can’t all grow crops and feed livestock.  We can’t all hunt, and we can’t all gather.

You can relax if you give up your dream of planetary control, and get back to the simple things, like cleaning your room and having a shiny kitchen sink, or at least that’s what the lifehack gurus say.  I can’t though.  Though the burden is great, I don’t falter, I don’t put it down.  How do I solve NTHE?  Well, first I cut myself some slack.  I know the Deep State is interested in this problem, so I know I’m not working on it alone.  Unfortunately, I think the answer involves slavery.  I don’t like it, but that’s what the probabilities show in multiple models.

My husband has decided to attend the local church’s sessions on whether or not this particular church should become a congregation that welcomes gay marriage.  There is a long and complicated history within his denomination on the subject of gay marriage, gay pastors, pastors officiating gay marriage, and similar things.  It is an issue which has been predicted to eventually split the denomination for over a decade now.  I don’t attend church, mostly because it is really hard to keep a straight face with all of that Egyptian/Roman Empire symbolism.

The story goes, that Sodom and Gomorrah were these two cities, who, when strangers appeared in their midst, decided they wanted to “know” them.  Apparently, “know” in the old language means have sex with them.  So Lot, being very righteous, offers his daughters to be raped to death instead of the strangers.  I’m sorry, but what?  You don’t offer your daughters to the neighbors to be raped and still call yourself righteous and godly!  (sigh)  I got sidetracked, didn’t I?

According to theory, the reason that you don’t rape strangers, is that hospitality to the stranger and alien among you is a very important quality for a civilization to possess.  When a civilization no longer is hospitable to aliens, it is doomed.  This is because who would want to trade with people who are going to kill you?  Just move on to the next city which decides to put you up with five star hotel accommodations and free coffee and breakfast instead.  If you don’t trade with your neighbors, then you don’t get access to the resources which your neighboring cities will come to possess, like, you know, uranium and IV bags and ecstasy.  Wait, I was talking about the ancient past.  So any city would need to trade in iron, wood, gold, medicinal plants, obsidian, copper, cloth, and the like.

You can not shut the doors of your city and expect to live.  That’s basic Derrick Jensen 101.  Cities require a constant stream of food, water, shelter, clothing, weapons, building materials, and medicine to survive.  They MUST trade, even if what they trade in is violence.  The same is true on other scales as well.  Families must trade.  Oh sure, isolated mountain men in the wilderness make it years and years on what they grow and make.  However, they really like shovels, knives, and axes.

Nations must trade or they will fail.  It takes time to fail, but fail they will.  That’s why embargoes tend to work, after all.  Nobody wants to be the neighbor of a failed nation.  It’s bad for business to take care of the stream of displaced refugees.  That is why China will step in to aid North Korea against the US’s meddling.  That is why the inflow of capital into the US, and the move towards a more isolationist military stance is not necessarily a good thing for the empire in the long run.

Ah, but did I want the empire to fall?  What kind of long game could I play?  I’m having a bit of trouble detangling isolationism from decentralization.  They’re not the same thing.

This is the time of year when all my favorite prognosticators put out their predictions for the year.  Will the markets crash this year, or will they shoot for the moon?  (shrug)  Unless you’re part of the global 5% who are capitalists in the original sense i.e. they own capital, why does it matter to you what the markets do?  Bitcoin will remain volatile.  Capital will flee from here to there.  More fraud will be uncovered, and a flock of black swans can be seen flapping their wings to the horizon.  Nope.  I don’t have a clue what the markets will do.  Other than perhaps on a global scale, housing prices go down.  But my neighborhoods’ housing prices went up again!  (dramatic sigh)  Do I need to explain outliers and regression to the mean again?

My doomer friends have all squinted in thought at their respective government officials, and the brilliant displays of competence, or lack thereof, and have unanimously decided that this year would be a terrific year to put in a bigger garden than usual.  Some of my friends will have to wait on that garden, as their thermometer reads in the two digits below zero.  (clears throat) Celsius, in some cases.  It seems there is some sort of solar minimum of sun spots at work, freezing oceans and rivers which haven’t frozen over in some centuries or decades.  Do I need to explain outliers and regression to the mean again?

You can’t have regression to the mean without variance, and variance loves to arrange itself in gyres and cycles.  Peak oil, Hubbert’s Pimple, these are simple things, following after a long history of peak stuff.  Peak wood, peak water, peak sunlight, peak obsidian, peak jade, peak gold.  It wouldn’t be so interesting if cyclical incidences didn’t co-vary.  We know that influenza and plagues co-vary with sun-spots.  This makes sense because colder people spend more time in close contact with other people and also have reduced vitamin D levels.  The US’s GDP co-varies with the number of automobile miles driven.  Empires rise and fall based upon whether they are willing and able to implement new ideas or become hide-bound sticks in the mud unwilling to see which way the wind is blowing.  If they spend their time brainwashing the youth with propaganda and squashing creativity, insisting on compelled speech, the collapse of empire is close at hand.

What can I predict then?  More police state antics, more disease, more volcanos and earthquakes, more flooding and fires, more homeless children, more Rescue Game fighting which only profits the rich more.  More indictments of those who practiced pedophilia, and those who exquisitely practiced enterprise corruption on a national scale.  More Congresscritters fleeing the country before their control files can be used against them.  What does this have to do with you?  Nothing, possibly.

The stars shine down upon us all.  The darkness falls upon us all, yet our feet remain upon the path in front of us.  No matter how far your path takes you from your home, no matter how alone your path may be, you know what you are.  You know the promise that lives within you.  When you decide to make the world a better place, to help people, to be kind and courageous, when you decide to endure your fear, to let it pass through you and see where it went, when love remains and hope doesn’t, well, the details will sort themselves out.  You can draw the water of peace from the deep well of understanding only if you’ve dug it first.  Therefore, may it be that you meditate more this year than last.  May that be a light for you in dark places, when all other lights go out.