An essay from the Archdruid report blog excerpt: The temptation to rely on stockpiles of food, technology, weapons, or precious metals to get through the impact of an age of decline is natural, but fatal. For two centuries machines and their products have been cheaper than skilled human beings. The result is a habit of valuing things over skills and, ultimately, a "prosthetic society" in which we're taught to neglect abilities and then pay for technological replacements: we use day planners instead of training our memories, buy bread machines instead of learning to bake, watch television instead of using our imaginations. That has to be unlearned in a hurry. In hard times, if you have a stockpile, you're a sitting target for other people interested in removing you from your stockpile and enjoying it themselves - but if you have valuable skills you can share and teach, everyone's your friend. Full (rather long) essay: http://www.oilcrisis.com/whatToDo/decline.htm
Interesting essay. The knowledge of simpler ways is priceless, but you will still need stockpiles to buy enough time to implement the knowledge.
Or get started a year or two ahead with implementation, especially as applied to crops and husbandry. But the knowledge is, as you say, priceless.
I do agree you need to be able to hit the ground with a buffer of supplies or already be deindustrialized inplace to make a transition. to this other lifestyle.. but I found it interesting nonetheless. There are other essays in this vein there also.. Re-reading he ( Greer) builds a strong case historically; past civilizations have sputtered out over time, not gone out overnight. He neglects to factor in the technological advances and dependencies that make that possible are not only available at this time but becoming widely available.
This type of thinking among PO people is something that I have run across many times. I never could understand it until I read one woman's posting about how there will be such a die-off when PO happened that all she would have to do is just walk into houses and stores and get anything that she needed! She said there was no reason for her to waste(!) her money now on survival supplies now.
Goodluck with that...This plays to the egocentric fallacy "bad things only happen to other people":i.e."Every one else will sucomb to airborne herpes duplex-27crotch crickets; legionaires disease or radiation poinsoning Ands she'll just walkover and liberate their supplies. It's a vague, nothinking cop out to the question "why aren't you preparing?". Kindof like theoftheard "what will you do if a nuclear strike occurs?" Answer:" well I'll be dead or I hope I will." Chances are if you are outside the immediate blast zone you will survive at least until the fallout settles....
