Could the mainstreaming of the peak oil problem stirring the transformation of human consciousness?

More than just change, I feel that the mainstreaming of the peak oil problem (see the Peak Oil Primer) is stirring what Eckhart Tolle calls the flowering of human consciousness.  

Donangelo ‘The Spiritual Adventurer’ says this (and so many great things!) in ‘All You Need to Know’:

#6. When we identify ourselves as consciousness, all else becomes input – all our instincts, emotions, thoughts, fantasies, physical sensations. Consciousness can thus evaluate the input without becoming captive to it. A natural space is created between the desire and decision to act, so that we can act mindfully and from the heart in view of our values. In time, this process becomes automatic.

By speaking up about my fears over peak oil, I only dared to dream that it would send up a spark of consciousness, that we could collectively release our grip on fantasies of endless growth or apocalypse and move forward together, hand in hard-working hand, towards a positive vision of a future that doesn’t involve continuous growth.

But do I seriously think that NY Times article about prepping for peak oil sparked this consciousness? Eh, hard to tell since it was just a short human interest story. Though the NY Times has incredible readership and it was, at one point, the fifth most popular story, it would be wishful thinking on my part to hope that the article made a huge difference. But because of my appearance in it, I have found some cool new people, learned new things, and have felt encouraged to keep talking. Others say they are encouraged to speak up, too, and that’s amazing. The spark, the ‘speaking with consciousness,’ is what matters. How dare I trivialize the amazing connections I’ve made – yes, I think the article made a difference. “No snowflake ever falls in the wrong place.” — Ts’ai Ken T’an

I have Carolyn and Andre to thank for the courage to tell my story. Let’s stand together with courage now and change the world through storytelling.

So what’s up with the coming-out of peak oil? What I think is happening is this: Many of us are now realizing, with horror, that an oil well exists in the deepest part of the ocean because a)we need oil to fuel our lifestyles and b)there must not be much more easy oil to be had. And an even more troublesome realization: it doesn’t even seem possible to quit the oil addiction cold turkey. Our lifestyles are fashioned in such a way that oil is woven throughout every waking minute in countless unseen ways.

But as with any addiction, acknowledging that you have a problem is the first step, and many of us didn’t know that our problem was hurting others until we felt the pain of the oil spill in the gulf.

Even though many of us don’t live in the gulf, we feel the pain of this oil spill because the Gulf is part of our collective memory – I have so many happy visions of the days spent in those beach towns and on those barrier islands with friends and family, don’t you?

Collective tragedy as a pathway to change
It took an oil spill and tragedy in the San Francisco Bay in 1971 for John Francis, a leader of the environmental movement, to radically change his life.  From the Yes! Magazine article about walking away from oil:

I tell my students, “If you are moved to such a degree that you feel the pain, and that you can feel the tears running down your face, then you’re looking at an opportunity to make a change, to make a difference in the world.”

Each of us has to have that moment when we know that we have to do something.

In this pain, we can find our opportunity to change.

It is sad that it took a tragedy of this magnitude but I’m seeing the flowering of human consciousness happen because of it.

Mainstream media opens the gateway to positive change
Thank you, writers and editors in mainstream media, for helping humanity to move forward in a positive direction.  Keep flirting if you must, but you should really go out to dinner with this topic and get to know your feelings about it like these writers did.

Boston Globe: Rethinking our oil-drenched lifestyles by Joanna Weiss

LIKE MANY people, I spent a good portion of last week looking at pictures of oil-drenched birds and marveling at the chutzpah of BP. The company’s ads are contrite on the surface but brazen underneath, filled with images of pristine beaches and industrious volunteers, suggesting that soon, all will be well in the Gulf of Mexico so offshore drilling can start again. Just buck up, America, and have faith! Stiff upper lip and all that.

Pity the birds; hate the company. But I couldn’t help but wonder how much I should hate myself, too. My life, after all, is one giant petroleum glut, from the diapers and diaper rash ointment for my son to the toothpaste in my bathroom to the Lycra in my jeans. Oil gets me to work and back, puts food on my plate, gets pumped into the tank in my basement every winter. Imagining a world without it is next to impossible.

But there are some people who are trying.

Newsweek: Boycott BP?  Don’t bother by Sharon Begley

BP and the 32 other operators of deepwater wells in the gulf are there not because they find it technologically interesting to see how deep they can drill, or because their roustabouts like the view from the rigs. They’re drilling because of America’s—and the world’s—insatiable lust for oil. The U.S. consumes 800 million gallons of petroleum per week, according to the Energy Information Agency. The only way to make this the last oil spill in the gulf is to make oil obsolete.

Huffington Post (huge readership = mainstream to me): Limit our oil consumption, drive less by Craig K. Comstock

Can we find a response to the peak of global oil production (and to increasing demand from Asia) other than economic depression in the U.S.?

Building lifeboats, finding tribes – what about everybody else?

I can’t look into the eyes of a suffering person or creature, feel their pain, and say “see ya, you’re on your own” because I believe that we are all connected, we pay it forward, our good deeds will come back to us in unexpected ways. My greatest hope against hope is not that we have to build lifeboats but that those of us who have awakened can help humanity collectively evolve, even those who do not know that they need to be helped.

Changing everything quickly seems complex and, well, impossible. Maybe lifeboats and tribes are meant to be the spark.

Tim Ferris says “It doesn’t matter how many people don’t get it. What matters is how many people do.”

“It’s critical in social media, as in life, to have a clear objective and not to lose sight of that,” Ferriss says. He argues that if your objective is to do the greatest good for the greatest number of people or to change the world in some small way (be it through a product or service), you only need to pick your first 1,000 fans — and carefully. “As long as you’re accomplishing your objectives, that 1,000 will lead to a cascading effect,” Ferriss explains. “The 10 million that don’t get it don’t matter.”

For collapse-aware people seeking a community, here are some ideas:

Transition Towns USA – Providing inspiration, encouragement, support, networking, and training for Transition Initiatives across the United States.

CollapseNet – Just launched today by Michale Rupport.  Building lifeboats so that we are advocates of the ultimate survivors, those who have not been born yet.

What ideas do you have? How about launching this green real estate model ASAP?

Why breaking through our fantasies of apocalypse and facing the reality of collapse matters
Excerpt from Alex Steffen’s essay “Night, Hoover Dam.” Alex is the founder of Worldchanging.org and author of Worldchanging: A User’s Guide for the 21st Century

…

And sitting there by the slack and dirty water, I had one of those moments of scorching self-vision. I realized that I’d been hiding underneath the skirts of the apocalypse for decades now. I’d daydreamed disasters as a way of not wanting too much, not caring too much; keeping safe from the fear too much knowledge of current events tends to tattoo on your brain.

But real apocalypses are sordid, banal, insane. If things do come unraveled, they present not a golden opportunity for lone wolves and well-armed geeks, but a reality of babies with diarrhea, of bugs and weird weather and dust everywhere, of never enough to eat, of famine and starving, hollow-eyed people, of drunken soldiers full of boredom and self-hate, of random murder and rape and wars which accomplish nothing, of many fine things lost for no reason and nothing of any value gained. And survivalists, if they actually manage to avoid becoming the prey of larger groups, sitting bitter and cold and hungry and paranoid, watching their supplies run low and wishing they had a clean bed and some friends. Of all the lies we tell ourselves, this is the biggest: that there is any world worth living in that involves the breakdown of society.

I sat there and felt foolish. Another boat went droning by in the distance. First light was breaking to the East. And, whatever happened, I decided, planning for failure was no longer an option. I still couldn’t tell you what success looked like, but I knew then that I was long past childhood, and done with thinking like a twelve year-old boy. I wanted to look the future square in the face, and not look away, ever again.

A breeze was picking up. Dawn was not far off now.

Night, Hoover Dam

My friends, it’s time to come out of our ego houses and into the collective consciousness.