Mike Rupert explains peak oil and it’s connections to peak population and the general instability of and oil based world.
A personal, sometimes intimate interview, with some archive footage to help explain some concepts and parts of history.
Mike’s solution: grow your own food, disconnect from oil and get to know your neighbors.
Part of living in any community is dealing with people. Most people are usually pretty reasonable to deal with however just like obesity there has been another secret menace plaguing 21 century society, Narcissism.
I spent quite a bit of time researching this one and found a really good book on the subject by the tennis pro/ science teacher Kathy Krajco. She describes her self as the adult child and sister of a Narcissist, so she knows them quite well. She used to maintain a blog up until her death in 2008. She wrote a book which is a good plain english account of why narcissists do what they do and how they do it. Her book is available online and here too.
Narcissists generally operate in the same way.
Lies and manipulation.
Threats and coercion.
Generally only have three facial expressions bored, happy and angry.
Their responses to you may seem weird like laughing at a dead kitten, and they do this to shock you and then make a psychological attack of some kind.
They are generally lazy and selfish and constantly criticize others to make them selves appear better in comparison.
They do not accept criticism well at all.
They generally hide behind a public face which they attempt to create, to hide their true self. They generally only reveal their true nature when that attack and they do this as secretly as possible.
Quite often they are incompetent or have mediocre skills because they have had a life time of getting other people to do all the real work.
The bottom line is you cant work with narcissists, co-operation is not in their nature, they simply don’t want to share anything fairly.
For the narcissist all they worry about is their public face and what else they can get out of any situation or person, morals just don’t matter to them.
Narcissists will be at least somewhat nomadic not staying in the same place/job/relationship for very long, because of the fear of or result of being exposed.
For the religious readers you might wish to think of narcissists as ‘demons in human form’.
Link to Kathy Krajco’s book ‘What makes narcissists tick’ 4.19Mb
An often overlooked quantity for a human in a difficult situation is mindset.
Mindset is a term unladen with psycho babble, and I’ll define it the way I think suits it best.
It’s how you look at the world, regardless about how you feel about the world, its how you look at it. Its how quickly you assess a situation. Its how quickly you admit you were wrong. It’s not giving up too easily. It’s learning from your successes and your mistakes.
So what is the mindset of a human that survives a crisis?
Determination, patience, pragmatism,sobriety.
Determination: You just can’t give up. This cannot be stressed enough.
Patience: this will help when determination wavers. sometimes just trying or waiting that little bit longer is all that it takes.Know when to be patient is just as important as the ability to sit it out.
Pragmatism: Sometimes unexpected thing will work in your favor, don’t feel you have been cheated out of a challenge by fortune if things go your way for a while. There will be plenty of times where you have to work for it and you will need luck.There will be many times you have to choose the least worst of two options, which will be a lot different than the best one of several.
Sobriety: This means a calm and clear demeanor as much as it means don’t be out of you tree all the time. It doesn’t mean you cant have fun, but it does mean you have to choose carefully you moments when you can let your guard down. There will be plenty of dangers of all types, sobriety means you are more likely to see them coming than not. It will also mean you will be more likely to see opportunities as well.
These were the more important aspects of mindset, they don’t take into account skills, knowledge, situation, equipment or location, but even so they shouldn’t change much depending on other factors.
Such a mundane but essential thing. You probably had a shower recently, you probably didn’t even think about it much until you read this.
How long were you in the shower?
How long did it take to get get clean and how long was just being a little self indulgent?
How much water do you think you used?
Consider yourself in a water and water heating limited situation.
How fast could you get yourself clean and what’s the least amount of water you could use?
Could you do it in 2 minutes?
Could you do it with less than 20 /10/ 5 liters of water?
What are you going to do with all the black(?) water you just created?
Have you tested your own home made soaps?
DIO real skills 