Figuring Out What You Have
Sharon August 5th, 2008
Ok, the bad news is that we blew our chance for the build out of the perfect world. I know that we’d all like as much renewable electricity as we want and the new green economy. Too late – time to get over it. Some of the elements of this may be available to some of us, but as a whole, odds are we’re going to be stuck with making refinements upon what we did blow an enormous wad of wealth and cheap energy on.
The good news, however, is that we’re not totally screwed 
. That is, all that cheap energy and wealth bought us some stuff – not the things we’d have chosen if we were planning for this, of course, but still. There’s a tendency in the PO movement to look at the bad stuff as though we just wasted everything – and we did waste a lot. But we got stuff – roofs over our head that are crazy too big, but just the right size to house a big tribelet of people you can work with (btw, Bob Waldrop coined “tribelet” and I love it so I’m trying to get it into wider circulation). Those suburban houses have no retail, but garages big enough to establish it. Those useless cars make great dehydrators, calf hutches, metal sources, etc…
The thing about peak oil and climate change is that when you see how much change you need, it is easy to feel *POOR* – and some of us are poor, and a lot of us don’t have enough time or energy or money to make a complete perfect retrofit. But I don’t think we should forget that most of us, in world terms, in historic terms, are RICH – richer than the kings of old, richer than most of the people in the world who are going to have to make do with far fewer resources and options.
I think adaptation begins with taking a look at what you do have. It means walking through your place and your life and trying not to see what you don’t have, but what you do – all the stuff you’ve accomplished, the resources you might turn into something else, the people who could help you and will love and support you in crappy times.
This is hard to do if you are in fear mode – or even just rushing around getting stuff done, certain we don’t have enough time – it is so easy to walk around with a list in our heads of everything we haven’t got or done, every limitation, every skill we need and tool we don’t have. But for this moment, it is time to stop. To take a look at your world as though you were rich – not in the greedy, selfish sense that we tend to think of it, but in the sense of having sufficiency and more, an abundance that overflows your life.
Spend a little time in this way of looking – because the truth is that we’ll never be secure enough, never have everything done, never have every skill or every resource. Our houses could always be better, the people in them more wonderful and useful, the location better. But scarcity, particularly now, where things haven’t fallen apart yet – is a matter of perception. There may truly be things you really need. But just for now, look at what you have. Make a list. Write it down – you may need it again someday, if only to remind yourself of where you start from.
Sharon
- Classes , adapting in place
- Comments(12)
I read this fact in a magazine a few years ago and it stuck with me so much that I wrote it down to make sure I could remember it correctly.
“If you earn $31,223, you are in the top 6.47% of the richest people in the world.”
This number may have changed a little in the past couple of years and some of us don’t make that much but almost all of us in the US are still in the top 10-15% of the richest people in the world. So stop thinking on a local scale and thinking how poor you are. Think on a global scale and how rich you are, then do something about it and share your wealth.
This is so timely. Thanks for taking a moment to encourage this kind of positive reflection and gratitude.
Its odd, Americans are rich globally and historically speaking by
income, but we are also debt burdened like few societies have
pulled off before (and the only one’s close are other contemporaries
like Australia). So by ownership rather than income we are
poorer than most of history has managed to be. Our great
wealth in income is what has allowed us to become so poor in
debt/equity. We are richer than the kings of old, but also more
in debt and poorer than the kings of old at the same time.
I certainly have a lot of interesting and useful stuff,
but much of it can be seized when I can no longer pay my debt
servicing, and indeed if my home were seized, I’d be lucky to be
able to take more than a little of my stuff elsewhere. And my
stuff is most not things that will help me survive. It is abundance
but NOT sufficiency. A poor farmer in Uganda with a 10th of my
income, even a 100th, and vastly less stuff might nonetheless
have sufficient things to be able to survive in precisely the way
that I don’t. And the skills that go with their things. I do have
relatives with useful assets, but who knows their debts may be
as bad as mine. Hard to know which of the things we or our
loved ones hold now, we will still hold in 5 years. I suppose our
skills are about the only things we have that can’t be taken from
us, and even those can be rendered useless by imprisoning us or
through injury.
Having just isn’t a very static state, but a constant process of
loss and gain and flowthrough. Maybe I don’t sound like I’m in
the spirit of your exercise, but I’m trying, I really did make a list.
But my debts seem to dwarf my assets nonetheless, even on the
metaphorical front rather than the financial. I certainly have
much at the moment, even if I also owe even more.
-Brian M.
Brian, I don’t know – as I understand it the back auction of most of your goods isn’t legally possible under most likely financial scenarios. I suppose you could lose your vehicles – on the other hand, I’d recommend getting rid of any vehicle that comes with a loan anyway, and replacing it with a beater that doesn’t – that just seems prudent, regardless of whether, as one of my students phrased it, the zombies come
.
As for the kings of old – depends on which ones. An awful lot of them were mortgaged to the hilt, actually – Gustavus Adolphus comes to mind, or Charles I begging to Parliament. I’m not sure that the resemblance isn’t pretty close
. As for ownership – depends again on who you are looking at – I’ll pit your ability to sue your lender for bundling your mortgage against the ability of, say, the Cherokee to keep their land. Or the Ugandan for that matter.
Sorry, I’m sort of making light of this – maybe because I just don’t buy the idea that the average home (maybe yours is an exception) doesn’t have anything of use. You’d have to do a good bit of sorting, but even the kinds of hoes one comes across at an auction or a yard sale is a heck of a lot better – more ergonomic, sharper, nicer to use than stick with a piece of tin can tied to it that I’ve seen Indonesian farmers use.
As for the skill set – didn’t we have this discussion about a year ago
? There are things that can be done about these things, to create more skills, even by academic gamer geeks (I am not attacking or criticizing you here, I am mentioning categories to which I have belonged 
).
You are right, of course – we are hemmed in by our circumstances. And some of what we have is shit – maybe even a lot of it. And when you have kids and belong to a class, letting go of the requirements of that class is both dangerous and scary. But there’s enough copper in the pipes of your house to pay your mortgage for a few months, I’d bet – pull it out, and you won’t have running water, of course, but that’s not the end of the world – neither does the Ugandan farmer. He just doesn’t have the pipes to fall back on. His country is getting hotter and dryer faster than yours is.
I’d say – look again.
Sharon
I meant to say, btw, that you could lose your house – but if you own your vehicle that means you can pack some of the useful stuff into it, and you have other family, and friends, and the car is still better than what a homeless Ugandan slum dweller has. I’m not trying to be Pollyanna here – this wasn’t meant as an exercise in counting your blessings and the angels on your shoulder. It was intended (and clearly failed) to be a serious question of what one’s assets were – and an attempt at looking at the assets we don’t see. Maybe it doesn’t work – maybe you are right, and we all have very little.
On the other hand, for fuck’s sake, I can’t for the life of me get anyone to come live in my house, so you and Robyn can always pack the kids, your debts and your copper piping and come live with us – the overeducated doomy geek quotient was so low, we need you
. I will expect you to pick up hoe swinging, goat milking and shit shovelling though – although if you’ve been grading undergraduate papers, the latter won’t be too big a shock.
Sharon
“A linen shirt, for example, is, strictly speaking, not a necessity of life. The Greeks and Romans lived, I suppose, very comfortably though they had no linen. But in the present times, through the greater part of Europe, a creditable day-labourer would be ashamed to appear in public without a linen shirt. …” — Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776
“When I was young I never expected to be so poor that I couldn’t afford a servant, or so rich that I could afford a motor car.” – Agatha Christie
The blogger from whom I borrowed the latter quote goes on to add, “when I was eighteen I never expected to be so poor I couldn’t afford a four bedroom house, or so rich that I could afford a computer.”
Wealth is a moving target. Peak Oil or no, wait ten years and some everyday items will become either terribly expensive and/or hard to find, some current necessities will be obsolete, and some things which only the privileged have now will be widely available. A dystopian vision of the future focuses on what will be lost, and a utopian one on what will be gained, and it seems to be a quirk of the human psyche that it’s hard to bring both into focus at once and weigh them against each other. Exercises like the one Sharon proposes are valuable because they get us to look at one, manageably small aspect at a time. So, to her ‘What do I own that will become more valuable?’ I would add, ‘What expenses will I no longer need to cover?’, and ‘What good things will be more readily within reach?’
Yes, I’d agree we all have all sorts of stuff- most of which, well maybe not the Humel figurines
, could be turned into something useful. Most of all though, I’d consider skills of the useful sort to be of the highest priority as well as family and/or friends and community. None of us are going to get through whatever may come down the road all by ourselves I’d guess. So having good relationships with those around you is really valuable in my opinion.
It’s kind of ironic though as a neighbor of mine has gotten more and more drawn into herself the more she gets wigged out about peak oil, the economy, etc. She has pretty much cut herself off from everyone but her husband, child, parents and in-laws; seems to me to be the oposite way one would want to go but I can’t alter how she has chosen to proceed- just wonder at what seems to be to be a really poor choice….
Looking at things we DO have:
a lot of tools, most of the basics required for carpentry and some of those for other trades, both hand and electric
basic knowledge of using the above
a garage full of how-to books, many never used (yet), including many on vegetable gardening (my immediate goal)
a yard that gets a lot of sunlight
no debt except a small mortgage — we never bought into consumerism
no albatrosses — not only no debt but a small house, little old paid-for cars, few electronic toys, no expensive tastes. Our needs and our expenses are not large.
a job that is as stable as any job is nowadays.
When I think about skills as wealth, I think I am pretty well off. I know how to manage a household (difficult it may be at times with 5 children), how to cook and bake from raw ingredients, how to sew, knit, crochet, draft sewing patterns, but most importantly, I know how to learn. I know how to find the books that will teach me what I want to learn, and I have access to friends in the Society for Creative Anachronism to learn other skills like weaving, spinning, blacksmithing, woodworking, saddlemaking (if we ever end up with a horse here in our apartment complex), etc.
I think that a good place to learn skills is from living history and historical re-enactment groups.
It is quite nice to think I am quite wealthy from at least one point of view.
My point wasn’t that we don’t have assets. We have lots of assets.
Lots of skills. And more skills than I had a year ago. Lots of mental assets. Lots of stuff in houses. I did make the list, and we have lots. At the moment.
But what we have and what we can hold are two seperate things.
And assets make no sense without a sense of debts, that’s what a balance sheet is.
It might be that our odds of keeping what we have may be slightly higher than the Cherokees (they tried suing too), but that still isn’t very good. Sure our hoes are better than the sticks the Indonesians use, no doubt and no contest, but tools require skills and land. Great hoes don’t matter without land to hoe, be it your own or rented or whatever, and land is the issue far more than hoes. I fail to see the point of selling scrap copper for 2 more months of mortgage if one has no way of paying the mortgage in month #3. Better to strip the copper, sell for cash, and split, giving up on the mortgage and hoping for something else. Or switch to family. I have family with far more useful assets than I have. But family cuts both ways, I will also need to find ways to take care of several older relatives. Suppose the medical system and their so-called retirement will still be there? Nah. Again any of them we have to support will probably have some kind of resources, and assets, but plenty of debts too. Heck, just the insulin several of them need will be tricky. Family is surely an asset, but it is a debt too. I have health assets, and health debts. I have mental assets, and mental debts. And so on.
Sure my beater car alone is better than a Ugandan slum dweller has, true enough, and the day may come soon when that is the home of my family of 4. How many of your snazzy tools and how much stuff will you still have when 4 people are living out of a car? How much money will those tools fetch, when everyone around has them, but doesn’t have any money, and you are desperate to sell? Tools are a great example of something that we have NOW, but often won’t be able to hold. l imagine one of your readers 5 years from now, finding again the list of assets they had 5 years ago. Will that be useful to them, or just a painful reminder of how much they have lost? Will their asset list in 5 years be anything like their asset list today? Will my parents have retirement funds listed as assets? Listing a hoe as an asset might seem more tangible, but if you have to flee in the middle of the night at some point, or pack your belongings into a car, or move into a cheap flat, or something, what are the odds that the nice hoe will be one of the things that makes it? If I had to reduce everything I owned now to what I could fit in my car, what would I keep? You emphasize adapting in place, and surely some people will be lucky enough to stay where they are, but many will not even have the option of adapting in place, there just isn’t enough ownership left.
I’m not really trying to be too complainy, I suspect that my family will take me and my stuff in, without having to move in with you. But how many families will be in cars? Or apartments, or fleeing in the night? The living out of cars contingent in California has certainly skyrocketed already this year, and most of them probably had lots of stuff that Ugandans would envy before being reduced to living in cars.
What assets you have now, and what you will have when you need it, are simply two different things.
-Brian M.
I’m actually in the process of figuring out what we have. Most of our house has recently been renovated, so there’s crap all over the basement to go through, including some of our post petroleum supplies. Going through all of this stuff has really made me think about what you mention in this post. So much of it is useless.
We’ve been hitting garage sales, thrift stores, auctions and antique stores to find non-electric appliances and gadgets that we’ll be able to use. It’s fun hunting for stuff.
I just have to remember where I put it all.
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