Awakening

In a recent post, the billionaire Hugo Salinas Price considers how much time we spend in a world of illusions. What happens when the communal fictions break down?

When the money supply has broken free from limitation (such as precious metals – he advocates a return to silver-based currency), it will multiply until the dream breaks – and with it will go many of the other social constructs that keep us relatively safe and well-fed.

“… the National Debt of the US is entirely imaginary. It cannot and will not ever be repaid, and will grow numerically up to the point at which reality finally dissolves the bewitched imagination which holds the population in thrall…

“The storm will force the men and women of the world, who have lived so unquestioningly in their highly imaginary world, to wake up and find, to their astonishment dismay and anger, that they have lost their jobs, that they have no savings and that their pension funds are gone or have been confiscated. Their indignation will be forgotten as sheer terror sets in. The Department of Homeland Security has been given a supply of more than one billion hollow-point bullets for good reason.”

We are connected to each other across the world and in abstract and technology-dependent ways that make the whole system increasingly liable to disruption. We have become detached from the resources and skills that would help us survive in our immediate environment.

This is why one of Charles Hugh Smith’s major themes is the need to avoid debt and conventional forms of investment in the future (such as a college degree), and instead build up local connections and a wide stock of useful social and practical skills.

Sadly, I’m not sure how easily this (undoubtedly wise) scheme can be adopted by the urban masses, especially in overcrowded countries like the United Kingdom, whose ratio of arable land to population is one-fifth that of the USA’s.

CHS is based in Hawaii, a fertile Pacific archipelago 2,500 miles west of mainland USA and almost 4,000 miles east of Japan. The majority of its food is imported, but official attention has now turned to the need for greater food security – see this 2012 Hawaii State planning document (pdf). Good luck, CHS – though you’ll need it a bit less than we do.

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