Bright side

One day a student asked a 
preacher,Saying, "O most 
orthodox ornament of the 
pulpit,I have a question 
to ask, O lord of learning;
Tell me the answer to it in 
this congregation.
A bird sat on the top of 
a wall; Which was best, its head or its tail?"
He replied, "If its face was towards the town,
And its tail to the villages, then its face 
was best. But if its tail was towards the town, 
and its face Towards the villages, then 
prefer its tail to its face."

- Mathnavi of Rumi

With all the economic and financial freakout, 
I thought I should point out some bright side. 
I figure these words will never come back to 
haunt me because if everything totally crashes 
into a Mad Max thing then there won't be any 
internet access for anybody to look anything 
up.

This financial crash could be what saves 
industrial civlization. Whether it is worth 
saving or not, I leave to wiser heads. 
Probably the American Indians were/are 
correct, Mother Nature should not have 
been fucked with in the first place. But 
leaving that aside for the moment, let's 
play the ball where it lies, shall we?

Numero Uno, Price and supply of oil. It 
was at 147 USD or so right before
everything went to shit. Suppose that 
particular trend had gone on. We'd
have heard about the end of civilian 
air transport, trucking shutdowns,
strikes, layoffs, etc. In other words, 
a lot like what we're probably
going to get anyway, except that with 
this demand destruction, the world's
oil will last longer than it would have, 
giving us potentially more time
to think our way through the Dieoff wall 
that we were accelerating into.
Whether we can make good use of this 
reprieve is a horse of a different
color.

Number Two, Maybe the finanical crash 
will hobble the USA mil.gov (and
other mil.gov's) to the point that 
they can no longer sustain the current
Imperial Shitstorm in the Middle East 
and elsewhere. It would be good
if Ron Paul's vision of the shutdown 
of every single overseas US military
base could be acocmplished, even if 
by default rather than design. Of 
course, that probably would just mean 
more mil.gov domestic repression,
gotta have someplace to deploy the 
jackboots. But still.

Number Three, Maybe local agriculture 
will get a shot in the arm from
this, for economic rather than ecological 
reasons. But beefing up the
old Victory Garden local growing systems 
might actually turn out to 
be what saves us from the Real Serious 
Dieoff and Famine that we'd 
otherwise have slammed right into in 
a few years with eyes wide shut.
Who knows maybe people really will rub 
a couple of brain cells together
and extend outward from local veggie 
growing into industrial hemp and
bamboo.