“The feeling of urgency is increasing every day now
for me and my close friends/comrades.

I find myself with an entirely new gestalt of ‘time.’

Time is now being measured not by the pulse of the Universe,
nor by the Sun and Moon into years, months and days,
but into thousands of gallons of oil pouring into the sea.”

Mary Nelson, info-warrior

One of UK author Keith Farnish’s Ten Tools of Disconnection used by the system, and one he spoke about in our recent conversation based on his book Time’s Up: An uncivilized solution to a global problem, was “Selective Freedom.” His example was the selective freedom to vote — but is it really freedom when there’s no substantive choice between candidates Tweedledum and Tweedledee?

This quote from Frank Zappa seems a fitting underscore:

“The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it’s profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, pull back the curtains, and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater.“

For months now, I’ve wanted to videotape a conversation with Keith Farnish, British author of Time’s Up: An Uncivilized Solution to a Global Crisis, and this week showed up as the right time. In the meantime, Sean Brodrick, Florida author of The Ultimate Suburban Survivalist Guide, became available, too. So we had a two-fer videotaping day using a friend’s DSL line and Skype internet video.

Keith spoke to us from Essex, U.K. He and his family are packing to move to a small town in southern Scotland for a simpler life. The packing boxes in his video “set” weren’t visible onscreen, but held up his notes!

I asked Keith what he meant by his book title “Time’s Up.” Time is up for industrial civilization, he replied. It’s rapidly destroying the planet with the economy’s incessant drive for infinite growth.

What we need is to reconnect with the natural world and with ourselves, he said, but the whole system is designed to keep us disconnected. Keith has identified ten tools of disconnection. He gave an example of selected freedom with the upcoming elections in Britain, where people are “free” to vote, but there’s really not much choice, because the two major party candidates are essentially the same.

We only dipped a toe into the water of his “Hundred Ways to Undermine the Industrial Machine” from Keith’s Earth Blog: Giving the Earth a Future. Sounds scary and maybe dangerous, but many of his suggestions are practiced by Peak Moment viewers, like reducing your personal impact on the planet. Keith’s book is available free online at www.timesupbook.com.

He touched us both with his closing words: “The day we lost our connection with the rest of the natural world was the day we started killing our life-support system…” (excerpt).

Sean Brodrick spoke to us from Jupiter, Florida. He’s a natural resource analyst for Weiss Research, Inc. and a contributor to Uncommon Wisdom Daily.com.

Robyn and I have heard Sean in a number of online programs. Besides being really enjoyable to listen to, we feel that Sean has his finger right on the pulse of the economy, the money system, natural resources, and what’s happening both on Wall Street and Main Street.

Sean seems to be one of the few in the financial industry that we’ve come across who acknowledges that climate change and peak oil are real (although he thinks the latter may be a ways off). He’s refreshingly candid about the theft and lies coming from Wall Street, the precarious nature of the American economy and  the high levels of debt (echoes of Chris Martenson’s “Crash Course” conversation, right?).

Sean said he was compelled to write The Ultimate Suburban Survivalist Guide because he lives in Florida, big time hurricane country. He saw many Floridians go through a hurricane and learn nothing from it — like being prepared for the next one! He expanded this book to include emergency preparedness for everything from natural disasters to human-caused emergencies, like economic depression or hyperinflation.

He talked about several preparedness topics. About home security, he noted that the best defense is knowing your neighbors. Sean’s family held a few neighborhood barbecues — and found real riches among the people there.

I had a lot of fun in this fast-paced conversation with Sean — his breadth of knowledge and colorful expressiveness makes for a lively and interesting conversation.

Sean’s content may stretch the envelope of what we’ve generally done on Peak Moment conversations, but then, we like being somewhat out-of-the-box on Peak Moment TV. Even in his own field, Sean Brodrick is refreshingly and certainly that!

Watch Sean’s program “Preparing for Disasters and Hard Times” (episode 170).

We just videotaped a conversation with Carolyn Baker in Boulder, Colorado from our home in the Sierra Nevada mountains. I’ve wanted to tape Carolyn for over a year, hoping to do so when we traveled east, but it wasn’t meant to be. Fortunately for us, software has recently showed up which enables internet video communications of sufficient quality to be usable for our shows.

Carolyn Baker is the author of Sacred Demise: Walking the Spiritual Path of Industrial Civilization’s Collapse, and principal of Speaking Truth to Power website. I first read one of her essays three or four years ago in Michael Ruppert’s From The Wilderness site, and was impressed by her attention to our psychological and emotional experience as collapse touches our lives (and that was before the mortgage meltdown and 2008 financial crash!).

In our conversation, Carolyn shared a concise, well-thought-out summary of her perspectives. As a historian with ten years of college-level teaching, she has a sharp eye for current events that are leading indicators of the collapse we’re feeling and seeing, but which is mostly absent from mainstream corporate-owned media.

But, as she pointed out, the recognition of these times is coming into the mainstream. Commentators are using words like “collapse” and “unprecedented.” Even the New York governor recently stated that “we’ve crossed the Rubicon” and “we’re dealing with something much bigger than a recession.”

I think of Carolyn as a premier collapse-watcher. Her daily email digest is an ongoing chronicle with links to multiple changing collapse indicators — economic, political, financial, homelessness, greed, corruption, spin, inequality. They’re examples of what she calls the Old Story that is no longer working, a story based in separation from nature and each other, a story in which the vision of endless economic growth is now hitting the wall.

If this were all her digest included, it could be pretty dark and depressing as a steady diet. But she also includes links to those preparing for the collapse — like the Transition movement, local food producers, permaculturists, communities creating alternate currencies and more.

Such people are living out aspects of the New Story, a culture based on reconnection to nature, including a reclaiming of our indigenous selves. We may not live to see that new culture in its fullness, but many people are finding it meaningful to plant seeds for it.

She provides her perspective on why the demise is sacred, starting with a definition of sacred as “set apart, part of something greater.” This big picture can help counterbalance watching institutions crumble all around us. We are in a process unlike any that humans have experienced. Part of something greater.

But Carolyn is not just a historian. She’s also a psychologist. The heart of Sacred Demise is psychological and emotional preparation. She asserts, with support from Carl Jung and Victor Frankl, that having meaning is essential for humans. In the book she provides reflective exercises to enable our seeing how we’ve responded to prior losses, initiations, and challenges in our lives, and how to carry that learning into what lies ahead. Perhaps my favorite aspect of the book are the well-chosen, soul-touching poems sprinkled throughout.

Like Psyche sorting all the seeds, Carolyn shines as a discerning sifter of information, sharing the essential and life-giving seeds with her readers.

Check out her website Speaking Truth to Power, where you’ll find plenty of essays, her books, daily email digest subscription (my primary information source for what’s going on in the world), transition counseling services, and online courses for navigating the collapse. I think you’ll find a seed or two worth pursuing there.

Watch the video conversation.

I’ve wanted to tape a conversation with Chris Martenson since I viewed his Crash Course last spring.

Chris opens the Crash Course by saying the next twenty years will be totally unlike the last twenty: we’ll face “the greatest economic and physical challenge ever seen by our country, if not humanity.”

In this three hour internet video (and DVD) presentation, he demystifies and weaves together the relationships between money, resources, energy and the environment — starting with the mind-boggling power of exponential growth (be it debt or human population). Chris has a gift for making complex stuff understandable and pointing to its impacts on all of us.

We met Chris in Berkeley a day before his talk at the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco (here’s the transcript). Ours was an engaging, fast-paced conversation. Chris started with the three-word analysis for our economic problems: Too Much Debt. And away we went from there — the implications if we continue the way we’re going, and ways to prepare ourselves.

Chris walks his talk. He left his career in the corporate world, sold his home, moved his family to a more sustainable community, and dedicated himself to awakening people about the effects of the crash course we’re all in.

Chris is both a realist and yet optimistic about our future, saying he believes we have the time, resources and know-how needed to meet the challenges ahead. He believes that “if we manage the transition elegantly we can actually improve things.”

I think that’s a pretty big “if” given the lack of political will, the corporate mainstream media’s blackout on these topics, and the comfort of denial by many who are aware of the problems. But I agree that on the other side of transition, life could be better: more connected to one another and the earth, less pollution, more free time, meaningful work. Many of the folks we meet through Peak Moment TV are already well on their way to that future.

Off-camera Chris told us of the small group of men in his community who are preparing and supporting one another to prepare for the times ahead. I hope we can tape their story when we travel East.

Chris is a quietly warm, personable man. He wants a bright future for his children and the planet. I’m impressed by his heartful commitment to finding the best ways to communicate our situation in ways that engage people to act purposefully rather than take refuge in denial. I’m really happy we’re bringing him to Peak Moment viewers.

Watch or listen to his conversation “The Crash Course - Exponential Growth Meets Reality.”