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Musings Report 2022-39 9-24-22 My New Book: Self-Reliance in the 21st Century
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For those who are new to the Musings reports: they're a glimpse into my notebook, the unfiltered swamp where I organize future themes, sort through the dozens of stories and links submitted by readers, refine my own research and start connecting dots which appear later in the blog or in my books. As always, I hope the Musings spark new appraisals and insights. Thank you for supporting the site and for inviting me into your circle of correspondents.
Thank You, Patrons and Contributors!
Thank you longtime stalwart subscribers Melissa B. and Rick A., and welcome new patrons / subscribers Jeff W. -- thank you very much!
My New Book: Self-Reliance in the 21st Century
I'm pleased to announce the release of my new book Self-Reliance in the 21st Century to my inner circle (you) at a 30% discount for the Kindle ebook (now $6.95 through Sunday, retail $9.95)) and a 25% discount for the print edition (now $15 through Sunday, retail $20)(96 pages, 28,500 words).
These discounts end Sunday night.
The inspiration of my book is course Emerson's 1841 classic, "Self-Reliance."
It's my first guide intended for pretty much everyone, as everyone benefits from increasing self-reliance.
Self-Reliance is not a destination you reach, it's a lifelong journey.
(Interestingly, the sayings "Life is a journey, not a destination" and "It's the not the destination, It's the journey" are attributed to Emerson online, but there is no record of him writing these lines.)
I wrote this practical guide not as someone looking down from the mountaintop but as someone on the trail looking up.
I discuss self-reliance in Emerson's day and the 21st century in the first chapter, Self-Reliance Then and Now.
Chapter Two focuses on The Mindset of Self-Reliance, and Chapter Three addresses The Nuts and Bolts of Self-Reliance.
What is the goal of self-reliance? My answer:
"The goal of self-reliance is to improve well-being, security and productivity by optimizing practical skills, flexibility, trusted personal networks and what author Nassim Taleb termed antifragility (not just surviving adversity but emerging stronger). The purpose of increasing self-reliance is to navigate the unprecedented transition from excess consumption to securing essentials."
Here is the book's introductory section:
* * *
The Difference Between Self-Reliance in 1841 and the 21st Century
What is self-reliance?
Ralph Waldo Emerson’s advice in his 1841 essay Self-Reliance still rings true today: “Be yourself; no base imitator of another, but your best self. There is something which you can do better than another.”
For Emerson, self-reliance means thinking independently, trusting your own intuition and refusing to take the well-worn path of conforming to others’ expectations.
This celebration of individualism is the norm today, but it was radical in Emerson’s more traditionalist day. What’s striking about Emerson’s description of self-reliance is its internal quality: it’s about one’s intellectual and emotional self-reliance, not the hands-on skills of producing life’s essentials.
Emerson doesn’t describe self-reliance in terms of taking care of oneself in practical terms, such as being able to build a cabin on Walden Pond and live off foraging and a garden like his friend Thoreau. (The land on Walden Pond was owned by Emerson.)
Emerson did not address practical self-reliance because these skills were commonplace in the largely agrarian, rural 1840s. Even city dwellers mostly made their living from practical skills, and the majority of their food came from nearby farms. (Imported sugar, coffee, tea and spices were luxuries.)
The economy of the 1840s was what we would now call localized: most of the goods and services were locally produced, and households provided many of their own basic needs. Global trade in commodities such as tea and porcelain thrived, but these luxuries made up a small part of the economy (one exception being whale oil used for lighting).
Even in the 1840s, few individuals were as self-sufficient as Thoreau. Households met many of their needs themselves, but they relied on trusted personal networks of makers and suppliers for whatever goods and services they could not provide themselves.
Households sold their surplus production of homemade goods and family businesses offered small-scale production of specialty goods (metal forging, furniture, etc.) and services (printing, legal documents, etc.).
For example, Thoreau’s family business was manufacturing pencils and supplying graphite (pencil lead). Before he took over this business on the death of his father, he earned his living as a surveyor.
Households obtained what they needed from local networks of suppliers who were known to them. If some item was needed from afar, the local source had their own network of trusted suppliers.
The government’s role was also limited. The government provided postal, judicial and basic education systems and collected tariffs on trade, but its role in everyday life beyond these essential services was modest.
The conditions of Emerson and Thoreau’s day—localized hands-on self-reliance was the norm and the elevation of the individual was radical—have reversed: now the celebration of the individual is the norm while few have practical skills. Our economy is globalized, with few if any of the goods and services we rely on being sourced locally. We rely on government and corporations for the essentials of life. Few of us know anyone who actually produces essentials.
Our primary means of obtaining the staples of life is shopping because producing basics ourselves is difficult compared to getting everything we need from global supply chains.
Emerson took the practical skills of self-reliance for granted because these skills were the bedrock of everyday life. Now skills have become specialized: we gain narrow expertise to earn our living and only hobbyists develop multiple skills.
What is self-reliance in the 21st century?
Some may feel that having a job--being self-supporting--is self-reliance, but relying solely on goods and services from afar isn’t self-reliance. Should a few links in those long supply chains break, the entire chain collapses and we’re helpless.
Money only has value when it’s scarce. When money is abundant and essentials of life are scarce, money loses value. When supply chains break down, money is a measure of our helplessness, not our self-reliance.
The inner self-reliance Emerson described as being our best selves remains essential, but the material-world skills of self-reliance have atrophied. We rely on government and long supply chains for our necessities without understanding the fragility of these complex systems.
In the 21st century, even more than in the 1840s, self-reliance doesn’t mean self-sufficiency. Even Thoreau used nails and tools produced elsewhere. Building a cabin on a remote pond isn’t practical for most of us, and even Thoreau re-entered conventional life after two years.
What self-reliance means in the 21st century is reducing our dependence on complex systems we have no control over. This means reducing the number of links in our personal supply chains and reducing our dependence on goods and services from afar by 1) consuming less and eliminating waste and planned obsolescence; 2) learning how to do more for ourselves and others so we need less from the government and global supply chains; 3) relocalizing our personal supply chains by assembling trusted personal networks of local producers and 4) becoming a producer in addition to being a consumer.
Just as Emerson noted that self-reliance requires being our best self--something no one else can do--no one else can chart our course to self-reliance. Our path must be our own, tailored to our unique circumstances.
Self-reliance in the 21st century means moving from the artifice of trying to appear grander than our real selves in social media to the authenticity of being a producer anchored by a self-reliance that no longer needs the approval of others.
Here are some examples of what I mean by self-reliance in the 21st century.
By becoming healthy, we need fewer (ideally zero) medications that are sourced from afar and we’re less dependent on costly medical interventions.
By becoming a producer in a local network, we reduce the number of links in our supply chain from many to a few. If we trade for food from local producers, there are only a few links in that supply chain. If we grow some of our own food, there are zero links in that supply chain.
By eliminating waste, we reduce our dependency on distant sources of food, energy and water—what I call the FEW essentials. If we eliminate 40% of our consumption, we’ve reduced our dependency on supply chains we don’t control by 40%.
By buying durable products that we can repair ourselves, we reduce our dependency on the global system of planned obsolescence and waste that I call the Landfill Economy. The less we need and the less we waste, the lower our dependency on fragile supply chains and the greater our self-reliance.
By moving to a location near fresh water, food and energy, we reduce our exposure to the risks of long supply chains breaking down.
The more we provide for ourselves, the less we need from unsustainable systems we don’t control.
Self-reliance has many other benefits. Self-reliance gives us purpose, meaning, goals, fulfillment, enjoyment and the means to help others."
(end of excerpt)
* * *
Like many others, I am skeptical that the physical foundations needed to sustain the Waste Is Growth Landfill Economy of permanent expansion of consumption are available at any cost, but especially at costs that are affordable to the bottom 95% of the developed world, not to mention the developing world.
Hyper-globalization and hyper-financialization have generated the illusion that Earth's bounty is infinite and nothing is impossible to well-funded ingenuity. But physics and the material world impose limits at scale.
Here's an analogy: yes, resources and technologies are available to lift a handful of billionaires into orbit, but not to lift a billion people into orbit. The hard part isn't the technology, it's scaling it up to planetary ubiquity at affordable costs.
Electric air taxis may serve the top 5%, but not the bottom 95%. There simply won't be enough lithium, cobalt, etc. to build (and replace) a planetary fleet of air taxis and a planetary grid of electricity that's truly renewable and not just replaceable like wind and solar at costs affordable to the bottom 95%. (Even nuclear reactors must be replaced at immense expense in resources and money.)
Even supposedly limitless fusion requires quantities of resources that are not scalable.
The one thing even well-funded ingenuity can't change is time: time has run out for hyper-globalization and hyper-financialization, and as relocalizing essentials becomes the solution, self-reliance will become the most valuable mindset and skillset.
Thank you for your generous support of my work!
Highlights of the Blog
2022-2030: Transformation or Stagnation? 9/23/22
Two Easy Predictions: Wealth Tax and Windfall Tax 9/21/22
Peering Into the Crystal Ball, We See... Instability Leading to Collapse 9/19/22
Best Thing That Happened To Me This Week
We dug out all the weeds in the cracks in our asphalt driveway and applied two coats of sealer. I'll be happy if we get even half the guarantee (10 years). Oh, and sunrise:
From Left Field
NOTE TO NEW READERS: This list is not comprised of articles I agree with or that I judge to be correct or of the highest quality. It is representative of the content I find interesting as reflections of the current zeitgeist. The list is intended to be perused with an open, critical, occasionally amused mind.
Dollar’s Rise Spells Trouble for Global Economies -- USD refuses to play along with the "dollar is doomed" scenario...
What They Aren't Telling People About EVs -- short read, recommended....
Wealth taxation: The Swiss experience
Electric planes are coming -- of course they are, but at what scale?
Why mining to make renewables will destroy the planet
An electric car requires 6 times more minerals than a petrol one (excluding steel & aluminum). An offshore wind turbine 13 times more than an equivalent gas-fired power plant.
The energy historian who says rapid decarbonization is a fantasy
His mission: lay out facts. "I’m not an optimist or a pessimist," he likes to say. "I’m a scientist."
Many people and policymakers seem to think with enough money and willpower, we can rapidly switch to renewable energy. You believe this is a delusion, and the transformation will take decades.
It’s not a matter of belief. What is decisive is the size of the global energy system, its economic and infrastructural inertia.
You drive a Honda Civic with a small, efficient engine. While not opposed to electric vehicles, you take issue with those who buy them thinking they’re doing their part to solve global warming, mission accomplished.
There are no EVs. They are battery vehicles reflecting the electricity’s origins. In North China it is a 90% coal car.
But so far, we are not even seriously trying — see the ascent of SUVs, the pervasiveness of excessive flying, and food supermarkets that now average 40,000 items. That all requires plenty of carbon.
Living into your 90s (25:48 min) -- supplements aren't a factor....
Frankly #9 - Creatures United (Nate Hagens)
With stocks in a sharp decline this week, and many recession signs, some analysts are looking for the Fed to curtail its rate hike plans early. But the commercial traders of eurodollar futures give a 10-mo. leading indication for ST rates, saying no peak until at least mid-2023.
China’s ‘hidden epidemics’: the preventable diseases that could reshape a nation--lifestyle diseases are expensive....
The Spanish Flu | DW Documentary (42:25 min) (via John F.)
"Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail." Ralph Waldo Emerson
Thanks for reading--
charles |
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