Innehåll
Foreword
Introduction
Part I We're Running Out of Ancient Sunlight
We're Made Out Of Sunlight
Extracting more sunlight-from other animals
Extracting more sunlight-from the land
Our destiny
When ancient sunlight got stored in the Earth
Using ancient sunlight
More ways to spend our savings
So, how long will our savings hold out? How
much fossil fuel do we have left?
How Can Things Look Good Yet Be So Bad?
1. Don't pay as you go-just live off
your startup capital
2. The Ponzi scheme
Our fossil fuel resources: startup capital or Ponzi scheme?
Can we grow our way out of it?
Ancient diseases are re-emerging
Things may look good simply because we
don't see or hear what's happening
Glimpsing a Possible Future in Haiti and Other Hot Spots
The Philippines: children hunting for garbage to eat
Nepal: walking four hours to find the day's wood
Western Africa: the wood was used up,
erosion set it, now it's desert
We notice rapid changes, not slow ones
The Death of the Trees
Trees
The root system water pump
Reseeded saplings can't pull the water down
Trees for beef: slashing rainforests so
Americans can have a 99-cent burger
Deforesting removes roots, affecting
groundwater and the water cycle
Extinctions: Diversity Supports Survival
Diversity supports survival, and we're
losing it
When systems are small, local, and widely
scattered, they're relatively immune to failure
Social diversity, too, is suffering
Climate Changes
The Garden of Eden and the Flood
Consider where we are at this point
A Visit to a Country that's Planning How to
Survive: China
Who will feed China?
Part II How Did We Get Here?
Deforesting, Fighting for Fuel, and the Rise and Fall of Empires
Can we save our civilization with alternatives to oil?
Green energy
When fuel runs low, fighting starts
The Power of our point of view: Older and
Younger Cultures and Wetiko
There's power in how we think about things
Today's Younger Culture view
Wetiko: gaining by consuming others' lives
The Older Culture view
We must change the stories that create our world
Teach our children well
The birth of class differences and power structures
Slavery and Freedom
The slavery (losing your freedom) of
civilization
Leisure time
Depth of culture
Modern-day slaves
A Question of Maturity
Dying of Thirst in the Information Age
We're not just asleep: we're intoxicated
The sickness of living in boxes
What it's like to be in touch with the world again
How and Why We Construct Stories
Words keep us a step removed from reality
Words then become reality
Stories In Our Culture About How Things Are
The Basis of Our Culture
1. It's women's fault.
2. The Creator made us all bad (a
uniquely younger-culture idea)
3. The Creator is a forgetful bookkeeper
Consequences of the story that "everybody
else is bad too"
The Great Forgetting and what we need to remember
The Great Forgetting
The beauty of remembering
But What About Darwin? Isn't the Victor Right?
The Lessons Ancient People Have For Us
From the San and the Kogi: Value community
and cooperation; we are part of the world,
not separate from it.
From the Kayapo: sustainable agriculture
Our view of primitive people
Our culture's growth has similarities to
cancer
Assault by wetikos leaves one with limited
choices
Power vs. Cooperation in Social Structure:
the City/State vs. Tribes
Tribal and city/state cultural structures
The structure of a tribal group
The structure of a city/state culture
How city/states might have started
City/state growth: Civilization and
cancerous growth
But how do tribes control their population?
But our nations are so stable...
Anarchy or tribalism?
How we think creates how we act
New Stories are Necessary to Change the World
The dominant story can and does get
changed. Then reality changes.
The present story: we're disconnected, separate
Change the story: reconnect
Part III What Can We Do About It?
Touching The Sacred
Viewing the Past
Achieve Presence
Learn to Create Awareness
Lessons from a Monk
Wake Up to Awareness of Life, not Things
Respect Other Cultures and Communities
Respecting the Sabbath for the land and Jubilee
Older Culture Wealth
Renounce War Against Any Living Thing. You
may compete, but you may not destroy.
Reconnect. See All Life as Sacred
The New Science
The first person's view
Physics discovers consciousness
You do change the world every day
Practice small acts of anonymous mercy
Reconnect with G-d...directly
Let's Change the Focus of How We Use Technology
Use our oil to not use oil
Living off the grid
Conservation
The Modern-Day Tribe: Intentional Community
Tribes and communities
Intentional communities
Get support and information from the
growing community movement
A visit to an intentional community
Reinventing Our Daily Life and Rituals
Rituals don't go away, they merely change
Intentional rituals
Reinventing rituals
We Have Much To Learn...and Even More to Remember
Recommended Reading