How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Peak Oil

I can trace my love-hate affair with TEOTWAWKI to the fateful day I clicked a link to Life After the Oil Crash.

I’ll admit I’d been living in some sort of warp. Everyone was totally wrong, but only I could see it. Since adolescence (or earlier) I’d had no faith in anything that anyone told me. I didn’t trust the authorities. I didn’t believe the media. I was completely at odds with the way that society functioned. What were my friends thinking? They ‘grew up’, quietly conformed, and unquestioningly took aboard the values and views of the establishment. I had to drop them. I had to leave them. I withdrew.

But I needed some support. At the the age of fifteen I learned TM. Then, at 20, I switched to another form of meditation. For the next couple of decades I did little else but explore the workings of my inner world. The outer world? Well, it wasn’t relevant. It could go to hell.

Much to my amazement, it has! Peak Oil has opened my eyes. It has forced me out of my shell. This past year-and-a-bit has been a whirlwind of a rough and tumble romance. For someone who used to shun the news on TV or in the paper, it’s been an education, I tell you!

How many books have I read? How many documentaries have I viewed. How many blogs have I earmarked meaning to get back to (there’s never the time)? How many posts have I actually managed to read all the way through? How many like-minds have I enjoyed making contact with?

It’s been fantastic. It’s been horrific. Though I’ve been to hell and back, I wouldn’t change a single instant or avoid a step of that journey. Peak Oil has brought me to full life!

Geology, geography, politics, religion, economics, psychology, ecology, spirituality. I’ve surfed a path to, through and around discussions of corruption, conspiracy, the media, corporatization, civilization, consumerism, capitalism, sustainability, permaculture, relocalization and relocation. In short—and in truth—it’s almost blown my mind.

But again, I’ve got to take stock and remuster. No more navel-gazing, though. This is something I must face full on with open eyes. It’s not going away. The thing is, there’s only so much I can take. The end of the world as we know it—wow! There’s nothing quite like that to wake a person up.