Recently, there have been ads for razor sharpeners because of the high cost of razor blade refills. This product is most likely worthless, but the idea makes perfect sense. Why pay over $100 to shave a year when you can sharpen and reuse your blades. What is the solution then? The solution is to go back to high quality products that were made to last a lifetime. Double-edged safety razors were used a century ago as the standard shaving tool. Safety razors were a great advancement over the straight-blade for protections from cuts. One would think that 100 years later our new razors would be better by leaps and bounds, but this is not the case. Cartridge blades and disposables save time at a higher unit cost and a lower quality shave. Presently, switching to a safety-razor will cost a user $30 for a quality handle, that will last a lifetime, and $15 a year for blades. Although shaving with a safety-razor is an art that requires patience and time, many enjoy it as therapeutic and benefit from reduced razor burn.

Will we see people switching back to old razor blades? Hopefully that and much more. I propose an economic solution that will satisfy investors, workers, and consumers. Let’s produce high quality, lifetime products at a cost that reflects the quality. How would this work? Consumers would pay more money for a product in exchange for an item that will not need to be replaced. Workers will work less since they will no longer have to produce massive amounts of disposable goods. Salaries will stay the same for laborers, but work time will be exchanged for craftsmanship. Quality of life will improve because the public will not be exchanging many hours for hyper-production, but a few hours for refined work. Investors will spend less on raw material and energy because less is being produced. They will make more money per product sold. Investors will also have to provide less amenities to workers because they will be working less hours.

I suspect this was the goal of the artisan. To produce the highest quality good with the greatest efficiency of the buyer and seller’s time, money, and resources. Until nature finishes its course of correction, I suggest that we switch our paradigm about what a bargain is. Replace the disposable with the long lasting. Cheap food is going to cheapen our health. Throw-away items are going to throw away the environment. Increased production is going to increase our time away from family, friends, and life. A long lasting and quality mentality will insure a long lasting quality existence for us.

Having this information in my brain didn’t bother me until I realized that I couldn’t name most of the plants I encountered. I was saddened that the part of my brain my ancestors used to name and identify usefulness of wildlife was now being used to store car information. Even sadder is that there is no benefit in nature for being able to recall car data.

Being able to distinguish cars only benefits the affluent in modern culture. It allows us to reinforce the illusion of class and wealth. Through advertising we are programmed to recognize each new breed of car that comes off the assembly line. As we recognize the latest changes in the new model year we recognize the datedness of our own vehicles. Our desire to mimic the most monetarily secure or the shame of being perceived as a less valued person forces us to indebt ourselves to a new product. We are fooled into believing that our shining new car casts off that stigma of driving an outdated machine. We are tricked into believing that our new rides will gain us entrance into the lifestyle of the privileged. We work harder and become less secure for our new machine and the elite grows richer and more distant from our efforts. Our need to mimic the rich stems from being misled into believing that abundance of money equals abundance of prosperity, happiness, and health.

I now realize that our culture has poisoned my brain. It hasn’t just poisoned it with neurotoxins in my food and pollution in the air. It has poisoned it by replacing the knowledge that would allow me to be free and independent, with knowledge that keeps me poor and dependent on machines for survival. The knowledge of this season’s fashion and next month’s smart phone keep me from having the knowledge of how to find my own food and to build my own shelter.

How do we cure this poisoning of our brain? We must reverse that mental mechanism that has led us astray. Celebrate the oldest, least expensive, most efficient cars you see on the road, for these machines have dodged the waste of obsolesce and proven their usefulness. We must also despise the unnecessary innovation and evasive marketing of new machines for these are our captures. We must reverse our fears. We fear nature because we no longer know it. We can no longer recognize what is safe or dangerous in the natural environment so we avoid it altogether. We must re-learn its benefits and dangers if we are to make an escape from our present culture. We must forget why it is dangerous to drive your boss to the airport in an outdated compact and why it is beneficial to wear the latest fashion to find a biological mate. We must cleanse our brains from the poisoning that make us hallucinate benefit and blind to disaster. We can re-learn what is real and forget the trivial that is ruining our lives.

“America’s going broke and the whole world knows it. Betting that its economy will spiral down and that the dollar will fall with it, foreign creditors are dumping dollars on the market … and even Third World street vendors don’t want to take greenbacks any longer. The further it falls, the less it’s worth. The less it’s worth, the less it buys. In the real world they call it “inflation.” In America they call it “good for business.” ……”

I also believe that we are heading towards an economic collapse. It may not happen like 1929, but we have definitely passed the peak of our neoclassical economic prosperity. The collapse of the American (and global) economy could give us an opportunity to reinvent our communities and economics, but before we receive the benefits of a crash we will have to deal with the risk of devastation. Economic crises throughout history have caused great suffering, violence, death, and cultural disintegration. What history and nature also teach us is that death always brings about rebirth and renaissance. The challenge of the coming years will not be stopping the crash; the challenge will be getting though it without destroying each other and the world while redefining the human experience.

The crashing wave has swelled from a population that cannot be supported by this earth, an abusive working system that has impoverished the majority of the world, a human made ecological disaster, and the repression and manipulation of the human spirit. This will be a hard wave to ride out, but I believe we can do it. If we survive the immediate future with our spirits and world intact, we will have the opportunity to build stable systems based on the mistakes of our past.

Here is some advice so that we can ride the wave to the shore instead of crashing into the rocky bottom:

• Don’t Panic - The unknown is scary, but fear will cloud your thinking and ability to make important judgments.
• Be Adaptable - Our lifestyles are going to change because they are built on unsustainable systems. As the economy crumbles so will systems that need never-ending resources to survive.
• Look For New Opportunities - As old institutions crash there will be a void of services. Be ready to fulfill needs that you can satisfy and accept other people’s services as payment.
• When Corporate Jobs Dwindle, Go Local - We will need people to fix things, grow food, teach, and heal. Don’t worry about not having the money to start a business, do it out of your garage. In the future we can all work out of our homes.
• Learn to Let Go - The more that you are able to let go of, the easier and lighter you will be. Once you are okay with losing your material wealth, you won’t care when the creditors take it. Let non-necessities go- you are building emotional wealth.
• Build Community - Our civilization has been destructive to communities, isolating us in our homes and apart from one another. Turning back to interactive communities will give us support, a wealth of skills, and the human connection of which we have been deprived.
• Don’t horde - If you come into some form of material wealth, share it. This will build good faith in your community and also protect you from being violently robbed.

Even minor adaptations will bring large improvements to our present quality of life. Just think of what we can do from there.

Surf the wave.

We must apply intelligent selection to technology, but we aren’t really worried that the neighboring village will reinvent metalworking and massacre our children with swords. We just want bulldozers to stop turning grassy fields into dreadful suburbs, and we want urban spaces to be made for people not cars, and we want to turn off the TV, and take down the surveillance cameras, and do meaningful work instead of sitting in windowless office dungeons rearranging abstractions to pay off loans incurred getting our spirits broken.

We like ice cream and hot baths and sailing ships and recorded music and the internet, but we worry that we can’t have them without exterminating half the species on Earth, or exploiting Asian sweatshop workers, or dumping so many toxins that we all get cancer, or overextending our system so far that it crashes and we get eaten by roving gangs.

I agree with you, modern life can be slavery. The problem is: human beings are complex and irrational. And there is a big wish for material consumption and hedonistic enjoyment in many of us. I think only a small proportion of people is willing and capable to start a new living in partnership with nature without human slavery and destruction of natural resources.

Youtube only allows you to post 500 characters so I am going to post my full response here:

Humans can be irrational, but I believe this is because we are living in an environment that forces the worst out of us. An interesting example of how people react according to their system is the Sanford Prison Experiment. Most humans are situational and our present state encourages consumption, abuse, and domination. Our material consumption is directly linked to the evasive and intrusive marketing that we are bombarded with everyday. With the quantity of psychological manipulation we receive, no wonder there is so much dysfunction in our society. I understand that it is easy to say the words “walk away” and know there is only a small portion of people are willing to do this. That is why it is important for us to try to define the walls of the prison for others. Humanity’s disease is spreading because it is too illusive to fight, but I believe that if more people knew the cause, it would be possible to have a larger movement to cure it.

Originally, I intended to use youtube as a way to reach out to the public. To my surprise, I found that there was already a vibrant “post-civilization” community supporting one another and raising awareness. These people have posted many profound and important videos, interviews, and montages. Here is a partial list of users who have important videos and collections: pennilesscripple, redpharmacist, zzz33333, and vaahti. If you are looking for an alternative to the blogging community, this might be your answer.