The future becomes the past

The more I look into the future, the more I see my childhood, and that was a much smaller world, but small doesn't have to mean bad. Of course, as clueless rural white trash, I didn't realize my world was small, and of a lower energy intensity.

Riding my bike everywhere, eating local produce, minimal TV usage (only had 3.5 channels), no real air conditioning. It was actually quite a nice life from that standpoint, but also a very isolated life and we were dirt poor. I remember laying on my bed with my most prized possession, an AM/FM radio, thirsting for contact with the outside world. Or reading every page of the local paper, line by line, because there just wasn't anything else.

Of course isolation allowed the local population to be easily manipulated by politicians, and the politicians were universally corrupt. On the other hand cable news cuts the isolation, but increases the manipulation. So it all works out about even.

People are pretty clueless about how much of life's necessities are not really all that necessary. I get the feeling that before the year is out, they will find out.

As I've talked to my neighbors, trying to feel out just how unaware and mentally unprepared they are, I have noticed that they just don't even consider (or comprehend) economizing. At least not while they still have credit cards. They lifestyle really is non-negotiable, at least they think it is.