peaknix

You may be new to the term “peaknik” and wonder what it means.

My understanding of the term is that it relates to people who have had a shift in their world-view from consuming without thought to understanding and planning for the post-peak oil world.

What is peak oil?

The wiki says:
“Peak oil is the point in time when the maximum rate of global petroleum production is reached, after which the rate of production enters its terminal decline. If global consumption is not mitigated before the peak, an energy crisis may develop because the availability of conventional oil will drop and prices will rise, perhaps dramatically.” (Source )

We are experiencing ramifications of actual peak oil and speculation that arises from traders who are understanding peak oil.

We in the US have been financing peak oil wars since at least the first Bush presidency and are only just now paying the oil price overtly.

Thanks to these costly wars – things, important things, have peaked very quietly here in the US. Education, roads, bridges, and something I know personally, Science.

I hold a Ph.D. in a life science. I know first hand that all manner of scientific disciplines have peaked quietly, without a hue and cry from the public at large.

Its hard for people to understand what it means to US Science for academic institutions to shift away from tenure to 3 year temporary contracts, perpetual post-doc fellowships, the preference for poorly paid part-time instructors to teach the lions share of classes from community level to the top of the line schools (these instructors have no job security and no benefits).

My particular sort of science peaked with Bush II in a very immediate and profound way. I have not been at the bench since 1999. I have a great pedigree, was doing great work, I had two Nature articles within 5 years, I was on my way into the scientific research system. That is a memory now.

Even with all this, I was not a peaknik.

I knew that Science was being sucked dry by the war, all the signs are there.

I was still not a peaknik.

I didn’t think deeply enough. I figured it was my own personal failing (hard not to feel that way, even today).

I simply focused on trying to feed, house, and clothe my family. That can fill your entire life with enough concerns and activities to keep you from the moment, the here and now.

We decided to homeschool our oldest child because the school system could not cope with a dual exceptional child (gifted but ADD).

I was still not a peaknik.

In 2007, we built our raised bed garden and grew our first real batch of food. Previous attempts had failed due to lack of good soil and animal protection.

That was about getting good organic food for the kids, not survival.

I was still not a peaknik.

There came a day recently, perhaps in the dead of winter, can not remember exactly.

I think I had reached a threshold of hearing about how expensive college was getting and stories about the student loan industry.

This synchronized with my own profound dissatisfaction with how my more than 24 years of intensive education has yielded me zero job satisfaction, poor job availability, and a definitive problem with bias against people with a doctorate in many if not most non-academic work settings.

My core dilemma was a realization that our paycheck to paycheck living would never allow us to save for a college education. I feel very strongly that it is a terrible thing to do to a child, to allow them to go to college on college loans. This is not based on religion or stubbornness.

This is based on my own personal experience. There is something very criminal about killing all Pell grants and scholarships and allowing a huge student loan industry to rise up and enslave our children.

I decided that I didn’t want this sort of future for my children. I didn’t want them to have the illusion that college and a post-grad degree would afford them any real chance of success in this world.

In that moment, I took the red pill. I began to see things in a post-post-modern way.

The next step in the thought process was, wait, it can not just be me that feels this way. I can not be the only one who lives a lifestyle substantially reduced from my parents. They taught me that education would yield a way of making a living. That promise has been rendered fundamentally false for me now and most definitively so for my children.

I next wondered, what is there then for my own children? What should we help them do to be successful in their lives. That really helps you focus like a laser.

After this, a free fall into unsatisfactory and somewhat scary speculation on what exactly is the matter with the world, how can we survive it, how can we help our kids survive happened.

Which makes more sense?

Learning how to set up a e-commerce website or how to drive a couple of oxen straight in the field so that the plow cuts a clean line. Would it be better to teach the kids how to pass the MCAS or how to raise chickens? Is it better to know perl script or how to identify bloat in your dairy goats?

Which sort of activity will put food in your mouths and enliven the mind? How do I figure out how to teach my children? Do I push them into a dysfunctional consensus culture (that will beat them into submission even if it means it costs the child themselves) or do we find another way?

The answer really only comes down to this one word: timing.

Will the collapse come soon or in the time of our grandchildren?

At first, I figured it would be later, for the grand kids. These days, I am thinking that it is MUCH later than I thought and that the time will be in my lifetime, while my kids are still young.

We now are teaching ourselves how to garden for survival. We have 12 dairy goats, we know how to milk them, we make and enjoy as much chevre as we like. We have a flock of chickens. See Humble Garden for details on that fun.

We are doing what we can to teach ourselves what we need to know and to develop our own little slice of the world into a verdant sustainable place that will put food in the mouths of my children, theirs and on for as long as possible, and to enliven the mind.