“My bet is on the hairless monkey.”

From the Center for Pattern Literacy (Permaculture visionary and Gaia’s Garden author Toby Hemenway’s site) comes this refreshingly sober and calm blog entry on the realities of Peak Oil: Apocalypse, Not | Pattern Literacy.  It emphasizes the flexibility of our species (our ability to embrace the Anthropocene?) and the responsiveness and resilience of human eco-cultural systems, even in the face of TEOTWAWKI (“The End of the World as We Know It”).  The author may not know the difference between a monkey and an ape, but this post has some interesting things to say about shifting the idea of employment, economics and the “need” for work.

Humanity has reached the stage, finally, where basic survival is not in doubt for many people. We have not yet grasped that the struggle for survival is essentially over, and we have overshot. Instead of noticing that as a species we no longer need to labor all our waking hours for the basics of food and safe shelter, and to fight off disease and predators, we cannot get off the survival treadmill. So we just keep making more stuff, rather than looking up, taking a breath, and enjoying all the wonders possible from being a conscious, intelligent animal that has mastered survival. Perhaps Peak Oil, and a return to a time when resources are dear and labor is abundant, will remind us that there is much more to life than the manufactured desire to have more toys. Perhaps we can lose our small-minded obsession with getting and spending, and finally grow into maturity as a species. (Read this: Apocalypse, Not)