As I Write This, Light Crude Oil is at $82.32 a Barrel!

[MatrixEscape]

Well, most of you might already know that oil, like it or not, is the lifeblood of what you call modern civilization. Oh, you may not like that fact and even realize how ridiculous it is that we are in this position, but it is a crucial fact, nonetheless. A simple search on the Net will show you just how crucial and connected it is to every aspect of your current life, no matter how "green", (meaning naive and/or ecologically concerned) you may be.

Oil is the bottom-line, not money or politics. I don't worship the black gold, nor do I value it, but right now, it is not about me and you, is it? Oil is almost ubiquitous in the sense that a large number of people still take it for granted and even manage to think it is about gas-tanks and furnaces while being unaware that it is like blood in your veins. That is, without it, you don't have a functioning body anymore and might as well reincarnate.

From outside the Matrix, I watch the diastolic and systolic of the crude as it flows through modern civilization. I monitor the background noise about supply, demand, peak, etc. Without this stuff, you don't have much in the way of politics or choice left at this current juncture, no matter how you want to slice that.

It is amazing to watch the "speculators" -- who seem to help control this vital flow of energy -- jump and gyrate and react to whatever it is that makes them push this base. crude oil price up, up, up ... and away. I don't see it going down much, (except for the usual and expected fluctuations) and it is going to be setting records from here-on-in. What does that mean to us right now? Of course, we also have the impact on gas prices that has another factor involved: A shortage of refineries with aging plants. No new refineries have gone online for thirty years here in America. Please correct me if that is inaccurate. Prices simply HAVE to go up endlessly now.

In the U.S. this is the end of the Summer season. Gasoline should be going down and heating oil should stabilize a bit after the peak season.

The oddest part about this immediate and impending crisis is that there are some M$M reports that make increasing energy prices sound just fine and dandy, to the tune of: If you adjust blah, blah, wages, blah, blah, cost of living, blah, blah, then current gas prices are not even near as bad as they were in the '80's ... and that is just pure bullshit if you ask anyone who is not in the upper percentiles these days. Their math is bad and their realism is worse. There are many more factors to take into consideration today than there were almost thirty years ago, than those who want us to feel good about what we read, (despite our gnawing, growing realization of our desperate situation) want us to be comfortable with.

The old question arises: How high will gasoline and heating oil have to go before you can no longer play this ridiculous, manipulated game that should be called, "The Road to Poverty!"? It seems to be coming, but for the heck of it, where do you see yourself forced to get off and live well below your current standards, or even to the point where you are thrown off this bus to Armageddon and have to live wild and even homeless?

Keep in mind that this is about gas and heating. Everything else, (if you have done your homework) will follow the same price increase, from cars, to food and meat, to every gadget you buy. Most of them are made of oil or rely on it in the process of producing them or transporting them. The fact that this is so ubiquitous and under the surface may be why most people could not comprehend just how much the cost of a barrel of oil will whack their lifestyles in the head if this consistent trend continues.

Thirty years ago, there should have been a profound change in direction and I bet, our capacity for technology would have created a far different scenario than we are in right now if it were not for control, capitalism, unchecked greed, and the need for power that follows it. We have given the Dominators and our genuflection to domination far more of a stay then they are entitled to. There is no more luxury or value in dominance and submission for either party on the existence scene. It is time to get over that or perish. This might be a once-in-a-lifetime, make or break, scenario for our species!

Yes, it affects you and everything that the Matrix has made you believe in about what life is, was, and should be. You are nature and you are natural in origin and effect. And yet, what is this abstract range of ideas and substitutions you currently live in? What does all the minds' "about" have to do with what actually is? This is the problem we truly face in the 21st Century and it is a grave, difficult, but compelling one for us all if we are to survive.

[Mojorabbit]

1. You are correct

and when I researched it and saw all this, I realized that the world's population cannot be supported at the level it is now with a decrease in petroleum. It will be ugly. I think it will be in my lifetime and I am not young.

[MatrixEscape]

2. Thanks!

I am not young, and very glad of that, considering the circumstances.

However, there is a world of alternatives within close distance, but they are kept out of our grasp by Status Quo that does not hold us, our offspring, or future generations with any value. In fact, current generations just might be able to be sustained at a greater level of quality of life, if it were not for this horrible stop-gap that keeps the mass media spewing the bible of the old and profitable way in direct occlusion to the potentials in our midst!

Over the centuries, human innovation has telescoped, first gradually, and now it is to the point where it is increasing in incredible proportions and in orders of magnitude. That could be a place where we literally LEAP into a new pardigm. We are being held back by the idea of profit. The profit yields something that everyday people don't fully understand, yet. When you have enough money, buying things is not as important as it was. At that stage, you go for both prestige and power. Either one will do, but if you can't have the power like Bush has taken upon himself as virtual Emperor of the US, then prestige is about having so much money, (more than you could ever really spend or use in a thousand lifetimes) that it makes you stand above and beyond somebody else who does not have as many figures in their net worth. Do you get what is now driving our market-based, capitalistic society today? It is about how Bill Gates feels when he goes to a party, etc., etc. It is NOT about how you feel when you can't afford to fill the tank up to go to a friend's birthday party.

I like to stay optimistic even though I am over the edge and beyond what most of you think is real or valid in human existence, (look into Alan Watts, or U.G. Krishnamurti, and neither one is a cult or a religion). My only real optimism lies in the potential that we can all see that business as usual probably means our personal annihilation or at the very least, a future of utmost deprivation, suffering, and potential torture and subjugation at the hands of those who have the power and prestige to inflict it upon us in their final, orgasmic realization and release that their goals in life have led them to. They do tend to need to get fixes that go up a scale that can easily include the suffering of others, that is not a new idea or phenomena. Sometimes, your own success can be emphasized by the sorrow and pain of those below your status. That is something we have to find a way to heal and fix in our cultures before we can move upwards and onwards.

There, as human nature would predict, many alternatives now flowering in our midst. Does the general population know about them, especially when they represent nothing less than a tourniquet on a hemorrhage in these times? We have a real crisis on our hands and your media is telling you nothing that matters anymore. What does OJ and Brittany have to do with our total fate -- now looming and glaring and demanding our total attention -- right now?

Many minds are at work to solve the problems:
http://www.peswiki.com/index.php/Main_Page

The real problem is the profit factor. We need to make everything that is viable available to everyone who needs it so that we can ALL survive this new age. The acceleration of problems versus solutions is so very intense, meaningful, and dynamic, that waiting for that capitalistic syndrome of early adopters and damned the poor until they can afford to get it, is becoming totally obsolete in relation to the needs we have as a planet of people who all want to make it as a species.

What does it profit a man to gain total prestige and power over his species and lose the whole World of beings in the process? Where is the "Soul" in that? Nobody is actually independent, no matter how much they would like to live in that Matrix-style bubble. Well, maybe those who live in the woods as hunter, gatherers in the most primal of ways. We don't hear about them in the news and they are certainly going to be declared illegal, or moved, or subjugated by this subsuming sense of culture we now have, in the end.

http://www.greatdreams.com/survival.htm
http://www.squarefootgardening.com

You could learn that this is really "it" and that it is time to change channels much faster than any slow, self-serving, system-oriented politician can ever hope to offer in their dreams they pass onto you in search of power and glory. You can continue play the old game that is being forced into obsolescence and simply spells out something your body could only understand: either you adapt and survive, or you perish. How that goes, and how bad it gets, is going to be up to you and yours at a some point. Actions speak louder than words ... forever.

The change simply has to be faster than you want it to. It has to be radical enough to keep up with the frequency of what is really going on. If we can do that in large numbers, we will not only survive, but we can prosper and move into a new phase of existence as humanity. The larger percentage of our problems are really based on the mind, what it is, and how we understand and respond to it, far more than circumstances. But then, the Dominators know that so well that they keep this mythological fantasy going and we seem to oblige them every step of the way, (while blaming them for our laziness and never taking responsibility).

Know thyself! Do what thou wilt! So Mote It Be! You never, ever have anything but what is now, no matter how hard you imagine what was and might be. And, I would even add, that now you think you have, passes by so quickly that you cannot even grasp that in a concrete and provable way.

[MatrixEscape]

3. I get the impression that ....

This issue will not really matter until you are riding to work for three or four hours on a bicycle while you pay twenty-bucks for a tomato, thirty bucks for a steak, and burn your particle-board furniture for heat.

Screw those alternatives when the media tells you everything is fine and we need to distract our personal survival needs in order to focus on this name or that name as a candidate of import even while our total survival options are running out and something of a greater impact is needed quickly and without old and outdated control realities to impede our necessary progress.

Oh well. Let them eat wood chips.