The meaning of freedom in a finite life

One of the more common themes throughout history has been disagreement between society’s rulers, and those being ruled, about how society ought to be run. Fortunately, history has also shown that if enough people are able to work together towards a common vision of a better world, we can bring about needed change whether our current rulers want it or not. One difficulty we face is that in the midst of so much messaging designed to present the way things are as the only way things can be, it can be hard to actually find that vision through the clutter. I think many of us have a vague desire for a life similar to the one with which we’re already familiar, but “better”. In a lot of our daily lives, the desire for change is less about wanting something good to start, and more about wanting something bad to stop.

While most people can agree on what our basic needs are, I think it’s generally understood that the basics required for survival do not guarantee a fulfilling life, and that different people have different ideas of what a “fulfilling life” would mean. There are always going to be some limits; my right to do whatever I want doesn’t extend to causing problems for other people. When it comes down to it, though, the common thread in pretty much all the myriad visions of a good life seems to be the ability to control how we spend our time.

The problem of capitalism – in this context – is that “free time” is viewed as an extravagant luxury, rather than a human necessity. Only those who don’t need to work for a living are entitled to free time. For the rest of us, any time not spent earning money seems to be viewed as a vice more than anything else, and sufficient justification for poverty. If I’m not spending every minute of my time in pursuit of money, then any financial problems I have are my fault, and evidence that I am a burden on society, in some way.

The system cannot fail me, I can only fail the system.

Not only that, but the time I’ve spent trying to turn this blog into a source of income that will keep me fed and sheltered is now a liability. If – as is likely – I have to spend time hunting for wage labor again, I will have a “gap” in my C.V./resumé. If I want someone else to pay me to do work that they want done, and that I am competent to do, I will also have to justify the time I have spent not working for the financial gain of someone else.

Throughout 2020, as the United States struggled to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic, this cultural hatred of free time was brought into sharp focus. At a time when hundreds of thousands of lives could have been saved by keeping people at home, the the capitalists running our country seemed to be mostly horrified and offended at the notion that – for just a few months – a majority of the population might be allowed to simply exist, without having to do work apparently for the sake of doing work. There seems to be a deeply held belief that without the threat of misery and death through poverty, nobody would do any work at all.

I think it’s worth pointing out that for the ruling class, this does not seem to be about whether the resources needed to keep everybody housed, fed, and so on would exist if people were “paid to stay home”, but rather about the endless need for escalating profits. Never in my lifetime has the United States so openly told its own people that their lives are worth less than the desire of rich people to keep getting richer. The justification given, however, is not generally that multi-millionaires or billionaires might stop seeing their “net worth” rise, or might even see it decline a little. That’s not a line of argument that’s very persuasive to those of us whose concerns relate more to the basic necessities of survival.

Instead we are told that if people are allowed to control how they spend their own time, nobody will do the work that’s needed for humanity to survive, and we’ll all starve from laziness or something. We must be coerced into doing the work deemed necessary by those who have more money than us, and their right to decide that is justified by their legal control of that money, and the access to resources that it represents.

It should be clear to most people that this is nonsense. If meeting the material needs of humanity was the driving force behind capitalism’s relationship with labor and production, then we would have eradicated hunger and houselessness long ago. Certainly we would have eradicated them before anybody was able to measure their wealth in hundreds of millions of dollars, let alone billions. The scarcity suffered by so many of us is manufactured for the sake of controlling how people spend their time.

Poverty is the tool used by the capitalist class to force everyone else to work for their benefit, and as a result, most of humanity is denied the freedom – the free time – to pursue happiness.

Any society will require work to maintain, but no society in history has lacked people willing to do that work, provided the ability to do so in reasonable safety, and to have time and energy to spend on other things. The only time coercion is required, is when people are asked to do work that is neither necessary for survival, nor pleasant or interesting to do. If there is a job that needs doing, and there’s nobody willing to do it, then surely we can find ways to make that work more appealing. I’d love to divide my time between writing, growing food, and maintaining my home. I would happily also spend a day or two every week on pretty much any kind of work useful to society, in exchange for the ability to spend the rest of my time on those pursuits. I’d spend more time than that, depending on the work in question, and I know I’m not alone. How many of you have known someone who enjoyed a job that would make you miserable?

Do you enjoy building houses or furniture? What about inspecting or cleaning sewers? What about milking venomous snakes to make medicine, or studying spiders to further our understanding of biology? What about dissecting dead animals to discover what killed them? What about nursing sick people? Delivering mail? Repairing appliances? Teaching children? Farming? Teaching adults? What about composing music, or performing music composed by others? Cleaning boat hulls? Painting houses? Gathering evidence to help settle a dispute? Building roads? Dismantling broken electronics? Cleaning up pollution?

How many pages could I fill simply listing the kinds of work needed for a just and functional society with our level of technology? What jobs, of the tiny handful I’ve listed would you be willing to do because they needed doing, and you had the time and inclination, knowing that your needs were already met?

Which of them would you be willing to do in exchange for access to your favorite form of entertainment, your favorite drug, or your favorite foods?

Which of them would you do because it would allow someone you love to work on something that makes them happy?

I’m not sure I’ve ever met someone who wasn’t willing to do some form of work that would make another person miserable.

A society that actually values the freedom of each human to pursue happiness, rather than endlessly growing “profits” isn’t just one that would be more pleasant for humanity as a whole, it would also be far more sustainable at pretty much every level.

Plenty of us would prefer to have toys or tools that last a long time, rather than disposable ones that pollute the environment when they have to be replaced.

How many of us would prefer to make tools or toys that last a long time, rather than ones that we knew would stop working soon, not because it’s not possible to build a better one, but because it’s more profitable to make and sell more items of lower quality?

With all the incredible technologies available to us, do you really think that it’s not possible for food to be distributed around the world based on need? Do  you really think it wasn’t possible to maintain a resource stockpile for pandemics that we’ve always known would happen? Do you really think we just don’t have the resources for everyone to have clean drinking water? Do you really think we need to have people claiming ownership of homes they will never need for themselves, just so they can charge other people for access? Do you really think our society is made better by forcing artists to do work they hate just to survive, rather than making art?

Is it so hard to imagine a society where all of our collective knowledge and skill is used for the health, education, and free time of everyone, rather than for one or two people to own a dozen yachts they never use, or to have private airplanes?

Is it so hard to imagine a society in which nobody gets rich off of war?

I don’t think it is, but it does require that we have the time and energy to do so, and the ability to learn from the passions and expertise of our fellow humans.

We have a finite time as sapient creatures on this planet, and it seems to me that the quality of our lives is centered around how we spend that time, and how our use of that time affects our fellow sapient creatures, both in the present, and in the future.

I believe we can work together to dismantle a system meant to control our existence, and to build a society that values our lives and our ability to enjoy them as best suits us, and I think that free time as the only true “freedom to pursue happiness” should be the central priority around which we rally.

If you want to help pay for the content of this blog, cover the costs of my recent move, and feed my pets, please head over to the Oceanoxia Collective on Patreon. My patrons are a wonderful group of people who give according to their abilities that I might live and work according to my needs. I’m grateful for every one of them, and you could join their ranks for as little as one U.S. dollar per month!

Community science: A way to help

I recently touched on the concept of ecosystem services, and I wanted to expand on that a little today, and highlight an opportunity for people in Florida (and everywhere else) to help out.

To be very brief, ecosystem services are the ways in which the other forms of life that surround us help humanity simply by going about their lives. Bats eat insects that might otherwise spread disease or damage crops. Earthworms aerate the topsoil and move nutrients around. Whales literally stir the oceans by being huge and moving vertically in the water column. Insects pollinate crops. Plants produce oxygen, and so on.

Another key concept here is that of biodiversity. Biodiversity generally refers to the number of different species in a given area (species richness), as well as the health of those populations. At first glance, it may seem that a healthy ecosystem has each species in its niche, but in general if you remove one, others will adapt to take advantage of the gap.

Humans have been managing our surroundings in one way or another for many thousands of years, and as I’ve said before, we have no way to stop doing so. Our only choice is to try to do it in a way that will promote biodiversity and ecosystem resilience. Doing so would be impossible without a clear understanding of the current state of our ecosystems, how we are affecting them, and what results come from our efforts to change those effects.

Specialization has allowed humanity to achieve amazing things by using diverse skills in concert. The downside is that we rarely know a whole lot about specialties other than our own. This ignorance creates a gap that can be exploited by dishonest actors, or even honest folks who just get the wrong idea. That means that whenever there’s an article about a species going extinct, there’s always someone asking the reasonable question, “how do they know?”

The answer isn’t too hard to find, of course, but people often lack the time, energy, or interest to go looking. In brief, we know what’s happening in our ecosystems because thousands of people of all levels of expertise spend their lives catching and counting plants and animals, checking their bodies for industrial byproducts and other pollutants, and so on. It’s a painstaking, sometimes dangerous task, and also very rewarding.

In college I participated in a couple animal surveys, including one that was responsible for saving a species of Bahamian rock iguanas. Every year, conditions allowing, a team of biologists and students spends about a week trying to catch, identify, and measure every single member of the population. Often the breeding season is also monitored, using different methods. It’s hard work, but it’s how we know how the population is doing, what threats it faces, and so on.

I’ve been part of similar efforts monitoring freshwater turtle species, and grassland snake species, and I’ve worked with scientists doing the same for insects, bats, plants, and birds. In my childhood I spent many hours playing in the Middlesex Fells around Boston MA while my father counted native and invasive plants for his graduate degrees.

I also worked with groups who organized every day members of the community to help in those efforts.  Every year, millions of people of all ages help ecologists by reporting sightings of birds, flowers, insects, frog calls, and so on, as opportunity or hobbies dictate. Those reports can be part of an organized study, or they can be made directly to relevant government agencies. In the latter case, there will be someone like me who goes through the reports to determine their likely accuracy. One common example is that a “cobra sighting” in the American Midwest is almost certainly a terrified Hognose snake trying to look scary.

I’m writing this post because Tegan came across an opportunity for folks in Florida to help with such a project, and it’s something I keep forgetting to write about.

Since I wasn’t sure what was up with this dude, I did what I always do whenever I see something weird going on with a wild animal; I called my local Fish & Wildlife! This might sound like a crazy reaction to seeing a splotchy turtle but I actually learned something extremely important that I would love for my followers (especially those in Florida) to know about too. After calling F&W I spoke with the turtle specialist for quite some time, as it turns out there is an unknown pathogen killing softshell turtles in Florida, and biologists are desperate to find the cause. They need our help to do this! The biologist that I spoke with says they’re relying on civilian reports to find cases for further study, so it’s incredibly important to spread the word and make sure people know how to report any abnormal appearance or behavior in turtles that they see.

Fortunately my splotchy turtle (I call him Uncle Walter) doesn’t seem to be sick based on his presentation or behavior! The turtle experts examined his photos and at this point they agree he is probably just piebald, though they asked me to keep an eye on him and make sure his condition doesn’t change. I’m so happy that I am armed with knowledge I can use to monitor him and his friends in the face of this worrisome unknown illness.

To my friends here in Florida- if you see ANY wild turtle that looks sick, weak, distressed, or abnormal please contact Fish and Wildlife immediately using the information provided below! To my non-Fl friends, if you have any contacts that enjoy herping or just outdoor activity in the state please let them know about this as well. Our turtles are very dear to us and reporting possible illness is the best way we can help find what’s killing these animals.

These projects are everywhere. While I was working for the Wisconsin DNR I was able to see some data that’s exempted from things like the Freedom of Information Act, not because of anything related to national security, but because making the exact locations of endangered species easy to find leaves them open to harm from the illegal pet trade, animal parts trade, and people whose quest for riches is blocked by laws protecting those species.

These projects are everywhere.

If you are reading this, the odds are very good that if you do a search for “citizen science” or “community science”(a term I prefer), a local species you like, and your area, you’ll be able to find something. If that doesn’t work, you can contact local nature centres, natural history museums, or universities, or look for hobbyist clubs. If you go through all of that and can’t find anything, let me know and I’m willing to bet I can find something.

Responding to climate change, and to human destruction of the ecosystems we rely on requires a massive amount of information. Science at it’s best is a collective effort, and with the ubiquity of cameras and recording equipment, helping that effort has never been easier. If you can’t see, you may be able to help with frog or bird call surveys. If you can’t do any field work, there are always data that need to be processed, or you could count animals via video, and you can always help to publicise these projects. If you have the time, energy, and interest, go see what your options are!

If you want to help pay for the content of this blog, cover the costs of my recent move, and feed my pets, please head over to the Oceanoxia Collective on Patreon. My patrons are a wonderful group of people who give according to their abilities that I might live and work according to my needs. I’m grateful for every one of them, and you could join their ranks for as little as one U.S. dollar per month!

How to disguise repression for power and profit

One of the most infuriating things about healthcare in the United States is that not only is it viciously expensive, the private insurance system is a deliberately confusing labyrinth filled with tricks and traps designed to maximize profit both for the insurance companies and for healthcare providers.

Prices for care vary widely not only from place to place, but also depending on who’s actually paying. The overwhelming majority of transactions in our day to day lives deal with fixed prices. The price one person pays is the same as the one everyone else pays, and things like haggling are not even an option. You pay the asking price, or you don’t buy that product.

That means that when we get a bill for hundreds or thousands of dollars for something related to health care, we tend to assume that’s just the cost, and seeing the size of some of those bills, it’s not hard to understand why people would be willing to pay hundreds or even thousands of dollars per month to avoid a bill of tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars for accident or illness. A good health insurance plan can make a huge difference in the life of a U.S. resident.

For example, when I spent a semester in Tanzania, I took the anti-malarial drug Malarone. It was the best option available, particularly because the alternatives had common side effects like intense, usually unpleasant dreams, or increased sensitivity to solar radiation. For a northerner visiting the tropics, it’s generally a bad idea to do things that make sunburns more likely.

The problem is that Malarone is more expensive. It’s a daily pill, and at the time I  believe it cost $5USD per pill. Nowadays the same supply would cost a little over $7USD per pill. For a four month trip, that’s around $600, on top of any other expenses. The insurance I had at the time, through my father’s work, covered it entirely.

That’s not the actual cost to make the pills though- not even close. It’s also probably not what the insurance company paid for them.

The relationship between patient and insurer is very adversarial, resulting in the aforementioned labyrinth, but beyond that, the bills patients see are almost never what insurance companies pay. They negotiate better rates and prices, and then try to push the costs they can’t negotiate away onto the patient, with the kinds of results David Pakman discusses in this clip:

I can’t help but feel that the extortionate “asking price” helps push people into paying so much for insurance, to avoid medical bankruptcy.

My own experiences include a plan in 2008 and 2009 that wouldn’t cover any emergency rooms within about 10 miles of where I lived, spending months and countless hours trying to confirm that the coverage I was paying for in 2018 and 2019 was active, and on trying to find a doctor that would even accept it, getting charged $200 out of pocket for a 10 minute consultation with a doctor when it turned out the card I had been paying $600 per month to get wasn’t working, and many other delightful experiences.

I took a fall on my bicycle in 2009 that cracked my helmet in half, and decided to hope no serious damage had been done rather than pay for the emergency room. I was hit by a car while commuting on my bike in 2013 (the driver’s fault), and had to turn down the ambulance ride and avoid getting my injuries checked out for the same reason. In both cases, I got lucky.

The entire world is subjected to relentless propaganda about how the United States is “the greatest country in the world”, but much of that is just incidental exposure to messaging aimed at American citizens, designed apparently to keep us from realizing the degree to which we are mistreated by our country and its ruling class.

I sometimes see people from Europe wondering why Americans don’t take to the streets over things like the healthcare situation, poor wages and inadequate safety nets, and so much more. A lot of it is things like this. Protesters risk arrest. Many companies reserve the right to fire employees who get arrested, or who miss work because they got arrested, or who miss work for a protest or a strike. Losing work isn’t just losing a paycheck, for many it’s also losing access to healthcare.

Protesting for any change in a left-wing direction can result in brutal attacks by police with kinetic and chemical weapons, which can result in massive medical bills. Rioting even more so (though police often try to turn peaceful protests into riots).

The reality of the United States is that it has found ways to repress its citizenry far beyond what you might think is happening based on what the law says. Rather than direct government control, corporations set the conditions under which people can have a stable, healthy life, and the government only has to prevent you from getting around the obstacles created by the corporations.

Health insurance companies levy heavy taxes for access to medicine, the government just ensures that there’s no better alternative than paying, and that same pattern exists throughout the system.

That’s why so much activism now includes efforts to help protesters avoid the steep penalties for exercising their right to protest, and it’s also why I ended up settling on my favoured approach to working for change.

This same dynamic exists to various extents in all capitalist countries. It is not the only form of repression, but despite all the talk about the “free” nature of capitalism, it is still a form of repression, and from what I can tell, it’s only getting worse.

If you want to help pay for the content of this blog, cover the costs of my recent move, and feed my pets, please head over to the Oceanoxia Collective on Patreon. My patrons are a wonderful group of people who give according to their abilities that I might live and work according to my needs. I’m grateful for every one of them, and you could join their ranks for as little as one U.S. dollar per month!

Forests for food: ecosystem management for a brighter future

When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, much of the blame for the disaster that followed rightly went to neglected or inadequate infrastructure, and the structural racism that allowed known problems to linger until they brought devastation on the low-lying minority communities of that city. Most of that death and destruction could have been prevented, had those with the power to do so cared more about human life than about money.

The region’s “natural” infrastructure got a bit less focus. Salt marshes and mangrove swamps once lined far more of the Gulf Coast than they do today. Industrial and commercial activity have both steadily cut away at those ecosystems, carving channels for ships and poisoning the water with oil and gas wells. The result was that the natural breakwaters that used to protect low-lying populations like New Orleans are mostly gone, so when a storm surge rises, there’s no tangle of vegetation to slow its momentum and reduce its power to overwhelm the human structures farther inland.

In our careless destruction of the ecosystems around us, we are also robbing ourselves of the benefits we derive from so-called “ecosystem services“.

Other such services include things like the oxygen generated through photosynthesis, the food we take from wild populations, the pollination provided by bees and other insects, the parasites eaten by insectivores, the water cleaned by wetlands, and so on.

It’s pretty common for people to take these services for granted. They’ve always been there, and it can be easy to feel like they always will be.

These days, however, it’s increasingly obvious that not only are we losing them at an alarming rate, for some, like natural protections against storm surges, they’re effectively almost gone.

If we want humanity to survive, we are faced with either attempting to replace these services with human constructs, or with cultivating and protecting them, restoring at least some of what has been lost, and living in a manner that encourages those ecosystems to thrive.

This is no small task, as we’ve done a lot of damage and the rapid warming of our planet will do still more in the coming years. It may well end up costing us as much as the technological and societal changes -like ending fossil fuel use- that are already at the centre of environmental discourse.

Now that we are effectively a force of nature on the surface of this planet, our survival depends on planning for the deep future. I think this is one reason the concept of a food forest has appealed to me since I first encountered it.

Food forests are basically what they sound like. A planned and cultivated forest ecosystem filled with plants that produce food for human consumption. Nut, fruit, and sugar trees for the upper stories, berries and things like grape vines lower down, and various edible greens, roots, and mushrooms at ground level.

Done right, such an ecosystem requires little labour to maintain, and where conventional farming often depletes the soil, leaving the land less productive for future generations, a food forest can potentially feed people for centuries or more without the need for massive use of fertilizers or pesticides.

I want to be clear – this is a trade-off. I don’t know the exact numbers, but a system like this is going to produce a lower density of food per acre than a monoculture field. Machine-based harvesting wouldn’t work, or wouldn’t work as efficiently. This is not a form of agriculture designed to produce vast amounts of a single crop like wheat, corn, or soy.

I think the ideal arrangement would be a mix of unmanaged wilderness, conventional farmland, and various kinds of food forest. The concept also isn’t limited to a conventional “forest” – similar planned ecosystems are possible in a wide variety of conditions,  and may not always include things like larger trees. While food is a central part of such an ecosystem, it’s multi-purpose.  It provides habitat for wildlife, a communal place for recreation, a tool for public education, and the cultivation and maintenance of ecosystem services.

This is not a new concept. Not even close.

When I say a well-managed food forest can feed people for centuries, that’s because such forests have already done so. Perhaps the most famous example is an ancient forest in Morocco, but in reality this form of agriculture has been found in all sorts of places. European cultures, as part of their obsession with the imagined superiority of their “race”, dismissed the possibility that Native American cultures, for example, pursued their own forms of agriculture and land management, simply because they didn’t conform to how the colonists thought such activities “should” look.

What this really comes down to is this: our current global society operates largely on the assumption that humans are somehow separate from the rest of life on this planet – that because we are different in how we interact with our surroundings, we do not depend on the ecosystems we inhabit. I’ll delve more into ecosystem services and things like food forests in the future, but with the alarm about declining wild bee populations alone, I think it has become abundantly clear that that perceived separation was always as much of a lie as the white supremacist dismissal of these forms of ecosystem management.

As indicated by some of the sources I have linked, work has long been underway to both raise awareness of these practices and to expand existing food forest projects – both new, and very, very old. In ecology, diversity tends to mean strength and resilience. I think that’s a guideline we would do well to follow if we want humanity to have a future worth living in.

If you want to help pay for the content of this blog, cover the costs of my recent move, and feed my pets, please head over to the Oceanoxia Collective on Patreon. My patrons are a wonderful group of people who give according to their abilities that I might live and work according to my needs. I’m grateful for every one of them, and you could join their ranks for as little as one U.S. dollar per month!

Dublin, at last

Well, where to begin?

Firstly, let me apologize for my long absence. My extended visa in the UK expired at the end of March, and so Tegan and I had arranged to move to Dublin, where her PhD began this year.

Unfortunately, her bout with Covid back in February is still showing up on tests, so she wasn’t allowed to travel. I came on ahead, with the cat and the dog to set up shop. Without going into too much detail, life got a lot more complicated than we had expected, and, I didn’t have much time or energy for anything other than moving.

Now I’m in Dublin at last, with Tegan shortly behind (I hope), and so far it has been lovely. Pretty much as soon as I got off the ferry from Holyhead, a fellow stopped to declaim at length about what a pretty dog Raksha is (which is an inarguable Truth), and to give me both his number, and the offer of help if I needed it.

That has set the tone for my time here the last couple days, with neighbors and contacts helping with boxes, groceries (since I am in quarantine) and other offers of assistance.

I couldn’t help thinking that this is very like the kind of community organizing/building work that inspired my direct action post, and after so long in the fragmented social landscape that seems so common in cities, there’s a lot for me to learn simply by trying to be a good member of this community to which I’ve moved.

It’s remarkable, for example, how a group of people going about their lives will cover enough ground in a city that if someone needs something, the odds are good that a neighbour will be able to pick it up, without needing a company like Amazon.

I suppose it comes with a loss in privacy – I’m not used to people outside my household knowing my grocery list and whatnot – but I find that it doesn’t bother me too much.

Maybe coming to terms with mass surveillance and other invasions of privacy has prepared us all to re-embrace the comparatively mild inconveniences that might come with a supportive community.

Multiple governments and corporations know, or will know as soon as they wish to, my health problems, my money problems, what I say near microphones, and what I do online.

They will never offer to pick up supplies for me, or to walk my dog.

When I get a terminal disease, they may well know it before I do, but they will not tell me or help me without a high price.

I’ve known them for two days, but I know for a fact that my new neighbours will bring me soup if I’m ill, whether or not I ask for it. I also know that being a renter impedes my ability to give as much to this community as I otherwise could.  Repairs, improvements, and maintenance all have to go through the company that owns my home, and while the people there are perfectly nice, and I’m sure are good people, their decisions in that regard are informed more by seeking profit than by the needs of their tenants.

I cannot be certain, but I suspect that is why my new refrigerator doesn’t work, and won’t until some time after my quarantine is over, despite this flat being vacant for weeks before I got here.

What would life be like if, instead of paying €1600 per month to someone else, somewhere else, I could spend that directly on what’s needed? Even if that was just a few hundred per month, it would allow me to save, and to spend more money on things like communal agriculture projects, or an algal farming cooperative, or something like that.

Instead, we have a long chain of people, each of whom is forced by law and circumstance to pay the next link, all funneling back to a small handful whose only skill is hoarding wealth.

In training themselves to become or remain wealthy, they neglected any of the creativity or human experience that would allow them to spend that wealth in a way that provides a net benefit for their own species, or the species on which we rely.

All.of this is to say that I’m “back”, with no intention of such lapses in the foreseeable future.  My formatting will be different for a bit because I’m doing this on a phone till I can get my computer running, but it good to be able to write for y’all again.

Tomorrow’s post will be on food forests, and as always I’m eager for feedback that will help me improve this blog as a resource for those who read it.

Edit: food forest post is going up Sunday. I lost track of time unpacking. It’s easy to forget that things other than writing also take time.

COVID update: Why masks and distancing matter, and why we need to change how things are run

It’s surreal. I’ve been isolating with Tegan and the critters since March. It was pretty easy, because nobody was hiring, and neither of us was able to get wage labor until Tegan got a minimum wage gig in August almost by accident. The animals both love having us around all the time, and we humans still enjoy each other’s company. It’s not a big apartment, and given the infectiousness of this virus, and the long period of asymptomatic contagiousness, we figured that if one of us got it, both of us would. Apparently not. I got tested yesterday, and my result was negative.

Even so, the evidence at this point is pretty clear – even if a mask and distancing don’t prevent you from getting the disease, they will make it far more likely that you’ll have a light case. For those who aren’t clear on why, here’s a basic breakdown:

When the virus enters your system and begins to hijack cells for reproduction, it starts a timed contest. The “goal” of the virus is to infect every cell it can, to reproduce as much as it can, and to spread to as many other people as it can before your body either wipes it out, or dies. The “goal” of your immune system is to develop antibodies that can destroy the virus before it infects you badly enough that you die.

Let’s say you got the virus because some science-denying asshole coughed and sneezed directly in your face. You got a huge dose – your starting population of the virus is in the tens of thousands, and its starting position is in your mouth, nose, and eyes. Viruses grow exponentially in the body – one cell produces many particles of the virus, and because those are starting inside your body, the odds are that most of them will infect other cells and repeat the process. You go from a population of 20,000 to 20,000,000 very, very quickly, and from there to the hundreds of millions, and then billions. By the time your immune system has the ability to really respond, huge portions of your body are infected, and with COVID-19 that means not just your respiratory system, but your circulatory system, nervous system, and multiple organs. Billions of your cells each pumping out thousands upon thousands of new virus particles. This isn’t great for your health, because the virus population is using your resources to do all of this, and those resources are then unavailable for normal bodily functions.

The virus is not what kills you, though. The problem is that the immune system doesn’t kill the virus directly, it targets the virus’s means of reproduction – infected cells. So, your body develops the ability to detect and destroy infected cells, some time after your initial exposure, and then it sets about doing that. The question then is – how many of your cells are infected? If the number is too high, then your immune system will basically be doing the equivalent of amputating a limb that has gangrene to prevent the rot from spreading to the rest of your body. It’s probably better than dying, but it comes with its own dangers. Specifically, it’s amputating one cell at a time, and it’s doing it in your lungs, your heart, your blood vessels, your nerves, and so on. The extent of your viral infection determines the extent to which your body destroys itself to purge the infection.

It’s a bit like doing a controlled burn to eradicate an invasive species like honeysuckle (in the US) – if it’s just in a small area, that method might well work, but if – as is the case in much of the United States – there’s honeysuckle throughout the forest understory, then you’re likely to destroy not just the invasive species, but the rest of the forest as well.

Now let’s say you contract the virus from your significant other or room mate, but you’ve had windows open and kitchen and bathroom vents running, you wear masks most of the time, you stay in separate rooms, and you never interact directly (can you tell I’m bitter about my current situation?). Now, instead of 20,000, your starting virus population is 1. Or more likely 100. Now your body has a better chance of developing and carrying out its response before the virus has infected too many of your cells. Now, instead of hundreds of billions of cells that need to be destroyed, there are just billions, or a few hundred million (out of hundreds of trillions in your body). Your body can take that hit pretty easily. It’s not good, and it’s not fun, but neither is it lethal, and depending on what cells are infected, it might not even have lasting effects.

By taking all those precautions, you’ve gone from your body melting down your lungs and veins, and killing you to eradicate your viral population, to doing pretty minor damage that you may not even notice, in an asymptomatic case.

So, back to my situation if I do catch the disease from Tegan, does that mean I get to interact with her again? No. Not while she’s still sick. See – you don’t stop being vulnerable to infection once you’re infected. It’s not an on/off situation. Let’s say I tested positive, but I don’t have any symptoms. Good. All of my caution has paid off, and my viral load is in the hundreds of thousands. I might get a bit of a cough or a fever, and if I’m unlucky I could have lasting damage to some parts of my body, but I’m not going to be in danger for my life.

And then, since I’m “already infected”, I go to take care of my wife, who’s worse off than I am. And every time I go into the bedroom, my viral population gets a boost. It might even get virus particles that have evolved to be better at invading cells (like the new variants now spreading across the globe). Now I’m going from a manageable, or even asymptomatic viral load, to a dangerous one, and at the same time, I’m adding to Tegan’s viral load, and increasing the odds that her immune system will do serious damage. I might even introduce a new variant to her.

And so I sit in a chilly room with wind blowing through the open door, and a vent running in the kitchen. I don’t go to comfort her, even though we could both use a hug. If I need to give her something, I leave it in the hall, and go back into my part of the apartment. If someone delivers a package, I tell them to set it outside the door, and wait till they’re long gone before I open it to get what they left.

Infectious disease is a numbers game, and knowing that, we can adjust our behavior to cut off the viral supply lines.

As I was writing this, I noticed that a great deal of what I was saying also applies to how countries deal with a pandemic. Fortunately, we’re not just killing everyone who tests positive, but the more people test positive, the more there are to infect others, and the greater the total amount of viral particles there are in any given location. A park on a breezy day may seem safe – and it is safer than an enclosed space – but if everyone in that park is infected, they’re giving off a cloud of viral particles, like cigarette smoke, that is more or less likely to reach other people, depending on how many are producing that cloud.

The lack of response in the US and the UK (probably other countries too, but I haven’t paid as close attention to them) has done just that. It has increased the viral loads of those countries, and consequently increased the viral load of infected individuals. Even now, isolation and masking are still saving lives, and helping to control the pandemic and many other infectious diseases. This basic math is the same for every infectious disease. COVID-19 is worse than most because, like with the honeysuckle I mentioned earlier, it’s an invasive species. It has no “natural predators” in our bodies to slow it down, and it has no “natural habitat” in our bodies that it will focus on and stay in. It’s in new territory, in every human it encounters right now, and so it’s going where it can, to the greatest extent that it can, and it turns out that it can go just about everywhere inside us. Eventually, the global population will have some level of resting immunity to this kind of coronavirus. I think it’s unlikely that it will ever go away completely – it’s going to be more like the common cold or influenza – but it will get less lethal, because it will be harder for the new variants to grow out of control as they do now, because we’ll have at least some defenses against things that look similar.

I’ll end by saying – not for the last time – that a pandemic like this is why it’s so important to have societies that understand and accept science, and that value the lives and wellbeing of the general population over, say, profit for the ruling class. Say what you will about Vietnam, but the evidence is clear – quarantining infected villages, and ensuring that those under quarantine had all the food, shelter, and entertainment they needed was effective. The leaders of the Communist Party of Vietnam may be wealthier than the general population, but that gap is (a) not as big as it is in capitalist countries, and (b) did not lead them to put their own wealth ahead of the lives of their population. Doing the right thing in a pandemic is not profitable for the ruling class. It’s an investment in the population at large. It costs money to inform people they’re under quarantine, and to provide them with meals, and to ensure that they’re able to quarantine without losing their homes, healthcare, or food.

This is not likely to be the last pandemic in my lifetime (assuming I die of old age). This will come up again, and if most of the world is run by and for capitalists, we’ll go through all of this again, even though we know how to stop it. The same is true for climate change. We know what we need to do to both slow the warming of the climate, and to adapt our societies to survive the warming we cannot avoid, but doing so will not be as profitable for the ruling class as the status quo. As long as the profit motive is the primary guiding principle of our society, we will fail to adequately address climate change, and we will fail in our responses to every pandemic that comes along.

Stay the course. Wear a mask. Keep your distance. Listen to the scientific and medical communities, and organize so that we can actually deal with the problems that face us.

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Proxy measurements can provide warnings of what’s to come

What does “sea level” mean? How do you go about measuring it? Those with any experience in large bodies of water know that “level” is rarely a realistic description. Even without the moon distorting the Earth and driving the tides as it orbits us, swells and waves mean that most ocean surfaces are constantly moving up and down. Beyond that, areas with a large amount of dense matter – like mountains and ice sheets – will pull water towards themselves, causing higher sea levels in their gravity wells, and lower sea levels in other areas.

Measuring sea level requires taking thousands of different sorts of measurements all over the world, and for all that complexity, sea level represents just a tiny fraction of what’s happening in the oceans, let alone global climate change as a whole.

So how can we measure the rate of climate change? What does that even mean? Calculating the rate at which heat is being trapped, based on greenhouse gas levels, is pretty straightforward. We’ve known the basics of that for over a century, and it’s how we have headlines like “Earth is heating at a rate equivalent to five atomic bombs per second“. The problem is that that heat doesn’t necessarily stay as heat. There are a myriad of ways in which thermal energy can be converted to kinetic or chemical energy, on top of things that are hard to measure like deep ocean temperature changes.

Most of the heat the planet has been absorbing has gone into the oceans, but even so, scientists have been detecting biological and physical changes all over the planet that are driven by the rise in temperature.

And that brings up another question – how much does a given change in temperature actually matter? For humanity’s purposes, there are two main lines of inquiry to look at. The one that tends to get the most focus, for obvious reasons, is the effect on day to day and year to year temperatures. Will heat waves get worse? Will rainfall change? These are important questions to answer, but they might be less important than questions about the non-human parts of the biosphere.

How will a given change in temperature affect the wildlife where you live? Some of that will be a matter of precipitation or heat tolerance – same as with humans – but some will be increased pressure from new species moving into areas that used to be too cold, or too wet for them to survive. The temperature change we’ve seen thus far has already been affecting ecosystems all over the planet. Figuring out what those changes are, and what, precisely, has been driving them, can help us understand what is likely to happen as the planet continues to warm.  These “proxy” measurements won’t tell us what temperature the planet is, but they will help us draw a connection between the heat we know has been trapped by rising greenhouse gas levels, and the changes we’re seeing on the ground. That’s how you begin to build a projection of “if CO2 levels rise to Xppm, it will probably have Y result”. We can’t see or feel the change in atmospheric gas levels, but we can see and feel follow-on results of that change.

Every time a research team runs a model to try to calculate how all these lines of data will interact, they tend to run a pretty wide set, allowing for different scenarios. The “worst-case” and “best-case” models bracket the most likely outcome, based on the data currently available, and the current understanding of those data. The problem here is that the current global changes are unlike anything that has ever happened in recorded history. Every year we enter new territory, which means that historical data are always going to be less reliable.

That’s why proxy measurements are so important. “Bio-indicators” like migrating birds and flowering plants give us insight into what climate change is doing right now to those species whose lives are most closely attuned to climate conditions.

Ice melt is another such proxy – it lets us see how fast energy is being absorbed and “spent” on converting solid water into liquid. Even if our historical data continues to point to the planet being on a “middle of the road” trajectory, if the ice is melting in line with a worse trajectory, then we need to check our numbers, and think hard about what’s headed our way.

Melting on the ice sheets has accelerated so much over the past three decades that it’s now in line with the worst-case climate warming scenarios outlined by scientists.

A total of 28 trillion metric tons of ice was lost between 1994 and 2017, according to a research paper published in The Cryosphere on Monday. The research team led by the University of Leeds in the U.K. was the first to carry out a global survey of global ice loss using satellite data.

“The ice sheets are now following the worst-case climate warming scenarios set out by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,” lead author Thomas Slater said in a statement. “Although every region we studied lost ice, losses from the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets have accelerated the most.”

Ice melt from sheets and glaciers contributes to global warming and indirectly influences sea level rise, which in turn increases the risk of flooding in coastal communities. Earth’s northern and southern poles are warming more than twice as fast as the rest of the planet. In 2020, a year of record heat, Arctic sea ice extent hovered around the lowest ever for most of the year.

As I’ve mentioned before, I think it’s reasonable to feel badly about news like this. The world on which most of us were born no longer exists, and beyond finding ways to take direct action, I think we also need to be thinking hard about what human life on Earth looks like, and how it will have to change. Food production is one obvious area of focus, but so is basic habitation. Science fiction as a field has spent decades imagining how humanity might survive on a variety of alien planets. Temperature extremes, toxic atmospheres, hostile wildlife – a lot of it involves putting ourselves in a situation where, despite all of our advanced technology, we’re required to once again struggle for survival against a lethal and indifferent world. Keeping homes cool is already shifting from a matter of comfort to one of survival, and that change is likely to accelerate. Higher temperatures are going to mean more dangerous air pollution, even without things like increasing wildfires or even crematorium smoke as new diseases cause mass death.

I’ve believed for about a decade now that the planet is almost certainly going to keep warming for the rest of my life, even if I manage to have a very long life.

That melting ice released CO2 into the atmosphere. The thawing permafrost is doing the same. The tiny amount of warming we’ve already seen has been enough to cause measurable changes across the entire surface of this planet, and many of those changes are going to make the warming speed up, or at least continue even if humanity stops adding to the problem.

So, we need changes, not just to how we interact with our atmosphere, but also to how we conduct our lives day to day. The floating neighborhoods of The Netherlands are a good example of this – they know sea level rise is going to be an escalating problem, especially with so much of their population already living below sea level. They could have just responded by building up their dikes, or moving people to higher ground, and while those options are definitely still on the table, having residential areas designed to simply float up as the water rises is one way to literally stay on top of the problem.

This is one of the reasons I keep leaning on local organizing as a catch-all starting point for dealing with climate change and political problems (insofar as the two can be said to be separate). The lifestyle changes needed for the Netherlands will be useless in most of California. The changes needed for California won’t help people in Alaska. The changes needed in Alaska won’t help people in Vietnam. What changes are coming to where you live? Should you be thinking about how to deal with killer heat waves as a community, or is air pollution a more pressing issue? Has there been an increasing problem with flooding from the ocean? If so, should you be focusing on how to keep your homes dry, or on how to ensure that there’s safe food and water available when the flooding happens?

At best, we can be sure that the worst-case scenarios are still a very real possibility, and that means that regional differences – and regional organizing – are going to matter a whole lot more going forward.

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Direct action in the face of a warming climate and rising fascism: Preparation without escalation

This is a work in progress, and I’ll update it as I learn more, find more resources, and as events develop. This version was last updated September 11, 2021. I continue to believe that while the 2020 election may have slowed the slide toward fascism for a time, the Democratic Party is incapable of and/or unwilling to take actions that would change that trajectory.

It’s the 30th of September, 2020 C.E., and a lot of people are scared. It has become quite clear that the United States, currently the most militarily powerful and aggressive country on the planet, and center of a de facto global empire, is on the verge of total fascism. While there may be some debate about what this means for the rest of the world, it’s my belief that it’s not good. If history is anything to go by, there may well be a temporary lull in aggressive foreign policy as the regime solidifies power and removes dissidents, but it seems inevitable that that will be followed by some form of expansionism. While an end to American imperialism is a prerequisite to a more just and peaceful world (though not the only prerequisite), a shift from neoliberalism to overt fascism is probably the most destructive way that could happen, and from what I can tell, a leftist/anti-capitalist approach is the most likely to have success in opposing fascism, and building a version of the United States that works for humanity, rather than against it.

 

Preparation without escalation

The central principle of this guide, such as it is, is preparation without escalation. The resources and information I’m including here were selected because I believe that they are the best way to build the foundations of a better world, while also making us more resilient in the face of a worse one. With the warming of the planet, the collapse of capitalism, and the rise of fascism, I believe that things are going to get worse before they get better. We are out of time. We must simultaneously build a more just, sustainable society now, while also surviving the violence of our fellow humans, and the chaos of our unstable climate.

A shield protects against attacks, without justifying those attacks as “self defense”. That doesn’t mean that it won’t be viewed as an invitation to attack, but the same is true for a total lack of defense. I’m not here to talk about how to wage a war, but rather how to avoid one, or survive it if avoidance is impossible. I believe that doing so would help my preferred side in a hypothetical conflict win, but right now it is my most desperate hope that I will never have to find out.

This guide is as comprehensive as I can make it, and I will do my best to add to it and improve the format as time goes by. That said, the only expertise I can claim is as a writer, and even that is up for debate. Use this guide as a starting point, not as the totality of your education or strategy. Because I am a writer, this may be a bit too wordy for your taste. Obviously I feel that my words have value, but you are not required to agree. If you don’t like my writing, ignore it, and go straight to links and resources in each section.

Image shows a round Viking shield leaning against a wall. The shield is dull black with a bronze boss in the centre. It's propped against a wooden wall, with a fur rug underneath it.

Community networks

Humanity’s single greatest strength is our ability to work together. Every strategy for organizing humanity revolves around how best to facilitate and guide that cooperation to further a particular goal. The socialist and labor movements of the past organized around common workplaces and geographically stable communities, but those circumstances are increasingly difficult to find in the 21st century. The current version of capitalism has people moving all over the place in search of jobs, and living in varying degrees of isolation from our neighbors. As climate change continues to pull apart our infrastructure, this problem is likely to get worse, as more of us become refugees of one form or another. Organizing needs to adapt, while still retaining a local focus. In the end, this is about meeting people’s material needs for food, shelter, medicine, safety, and companionship, and those are necessarily local issues. The goal of building community networks should be to create something that can accommodate people coming and going, and that does not require any great degree of ideological buy-in.

As far as I can tell, there’s nothing wrong with having sub-groups within a community that are working towards their own ends, but the only ideological requirement of a community network should be ensuring that the basic needs of everyone in that community are met. This necessarily exclude those following ideologies like fascism that seek to eliminate segments of the population. Community networks are, like tolerance, a peace treaty – they exist for the benefit and protection of all those who abide by the conditions and work for the support and continuation of the network. Those whose goal is the destruction of parts of that network are not entitled to protection or inclusion.

It can be tempting to try to form networks to deal with a specific problem, like climate change, community self-defense, or other such things, but while there may be times when that is appropriate, that is not the goal in this case. Such projects may emerge from networks like this, but the network is an end unto itself. The purpose is to establish relationships, to know who’s who, to have a contact list to make sure someone’s getting food in rough times, or to see who has a tool they can lend, or a skill they can teach. The purpose is to know what resources your community has at its disposal before those resources are needed, and to work together to grow that pool of skills and material goods.

There are a lot of people out there doing versions of this work, and there may be people in your community already working toward this end. The following two videos – and the channel they’re from – are well worth your time.

If you live in the United States, and you don’t know where to start in finding people, start here:

I also strongly recommend checking out this thread from Black Socialists of America. Minority groups often have experience in using this kind of organizing and social power to deal with problems, as systems designed to serve the majority often neglect the needs of minorities, whether by accident or – more often – by design. Click through here to read the whole thread:

If you’re uncertain about taking the very first steps, this video and the channel it’s from may be helpful.

As always, keep in mind that this is a collective effort. While there may be people who take on a leadership role or are put in leadership or coordinator positions, at no point should any one person be so vital to the whole that the network ceases to function if they have to move away, or are taken away. Once you have your local network, you can practice actions, and start looking to team up with other groups and networks for coordinated action over a larger area.

Mutual aid

In many ways, mutual aid is the core premise of any community network. We grow stronger together by sharing skills and resources, and by helping each other. While you may not want to use this language in some parts of the United States, these networks are the embodiment of the core principle of communism: From each according to their ability, to each according to their need. If someone needs food, and you have food to spare, you give them a meal, because some day you might need their help, or help from someone else in the community. If someone needs shelter, you give them shelter, because it might be your house that’s destroyed next. If someone needs medical attention, you give them medical attention, because we all will need medical attention some day.

These are functions that communities have always provided, since before recorded history, but in recent years, with an abundance of resources, some societies have let these practices lapse. These are the principles behind social safety nets, and the principles that have been undermined, in the United States, by a constant emphasis on individualism and selfishness as the guiding principles of society, and a mythologization of “independence”.

Organized mutual aid is the entire foundation of human civilization, and recent history has shown that trying to replace that with a government-provided social safety net is rarely – if ever – going to be sufficient. Such large-scale projects may well have their place, but from what I’ve seen, without a solid foundation of overlapping community networks, they are likely to crumble.

In many parts of the world, church groups have served this sort of purpose, but it’s my opinion that that leaves us vulnerable, as a species, to an impulse to divide ourselves into factions, and to focus more on our differences than our commonalities. Longtime readers of my work will know that it is my view that we need to practice solidarity at a global level if we are to survive as a species, and build a more just, sustainable version of human society.

While the community networks we’re talking about here must be, by design, as broad in scope as possible, there are many existing mutual aid projects, that you can learn from, contribute to, and benefit from while doing other organizing work. Because of the situation we’re in now, as a species, we have to work simultaneously to build a better world, and to survive an unstable climate unlike anything humanity has ever encountered. There is no shame in needed help. The fact that we all need help from time to time is the entire point of this, and indeed the entire point of human society.

Infiltration

This may not need stating, but not everybody will want things like this to succeed. We don’t need to go into every possible reason for this, but because this kind of organizing is a great way to build up collective power that doesn’t answer to any authorities, authoritarian people and systems tend to oppose it. White supremacists, for example, will probably not be happy to see a successful network made up of diverse races, religions, and so on, at least partly because the mere existence of that kind of cooperation disproves their belief that getting along like that is impossible. That doesn’t mean that you need to be trying to root out white supremacists, or anything, but be aware that various groups of that sort exist in every state in the U.S.A., and they have a record of infiltrating organizations and institutions to gain power and influence, to sabotage efforts, or to make lists of targets.

As the introduction to this guide points out, we are at a point in history where white supremacist and fascist groups are increasingly likely to use intimidation or violence to remove opposition. Look out for each other. Have each others’ backs. Communicate. If you think there’s danger, take steps to protect yourselves and each other. This is a known problem in the past, and in the present. Antifa infiltrates fascist groups, and fascists have been known to infiltrate leftist groups, and protests (BLM protesters spotted these people and reported them as looking suspicious).

This is also a problem with law enforcement. As you may or may not be aware, there’s a problem with white supremacist inflitration of law enforcement, but there’s also a history of law enforcement infiltration of activists groups, particularly those on the left, and those engaged in the organization and use of collective power. Even before law enforcement was acting in service to a blatantly fascist government, they have gone to extreme lengths to infiltrate, spy on, and intimidate activist groups.

Now the U.S. Department of Homeland Security is actively building the legal infrastructure to treat domestic opposition as part of international “terrorist” networks, and a community network like this – even if its activity is limited to providing meals to the sick or elderly – is the sort of thing they like to target. As with non-governmental fascist/white supremacist groups, there’s a danger in being over-zealous in your efforts to root out and expel infiltrators, but it’s good to be aware of them. As with all other things, decisions about how to deal with this sort of problem should be made collectively. Part of the point of a group like this is that there is no “leadership” to single out, as such. There may be people who lead in one way or another, but your network should be built so if those people move away – or if they are imprisoned or killed – it will not meaningfully harm the ability of the network to function.

Secure communication

Privacy is a dodgy issue in the 21st century. While the population of the US does, in theory, have a right to privacy that holds unless surrendered or removed by a warrant, it has long been clear that that law enforcement is happy to invent pretexts for surveillance of activists – particularly those on the left. It’s reasonable to assume that with a more overtly fascist government, this problem would become worse, and with law enforcement working with fascist groups, and having white supremacists within their ranks, as mentioned earlier, it’s reasonable to assume that information about leftist groups will get into the hands of fascist groups. Encrypted communications are important if possible. Signal has a decent reputation for security, and groups like It’s Going Down often have resources on digital hygene/security. This is one of those situations where, on paper, if you’re doing nothing wrong, there’s nothing to worry about, but in practice there’s a long history of people doing nothing wrong still being subjected to surveillance. Take precautions, think about what you say via electronic or paper communication, and who might be listening. Again, the more authoritarian a country becomes, the more important this is. This is another reason why decentralized, local organization is important – it means that if need be, communication can be done in person.

Defense

This is an area about which I don’t know a whole lot, and much of it is outside the scope of this guide. That said, there are a few things to bear in mind. It’s Going Down is a decent place to start for concepts of community self-defense, but beyond that, awareness and prevention are as central to this as they are to avoiding injury and disease – an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Beyond that, I will say that for those are worried about attacks by fascist paramilitary “militias” or other such people, body armor and ballistic shields can be purchased, though they can be pretty expensive.

I should also note, in case you haven’t noticed, that law enforcement often views the act of preparing to defend yourself against them – even as passively as masks, goggles, or helmets to protect against pepper spray, teargas, and projectiles – as an offensive act. They have been known to treat any form of protective gear as an act of “escalation”, even if it’s in response to weapons they used before activists got any such gear.

Medicine

The United States of America is already a fairly dangerous country compared to many other nation. In addition to all the various causes of illness and injury that may be found anywhere in the world, medical care is often expensive, even with health insurance. Injury or illness can move a person from financial stability into debt virtually overnight. If the U.S. continues its slide toward fascism, this is likely to continue to be the case, or even become worse, particularly for those who are engaged in activities or practice ideologies that the regime doesn’t like. If you add climate change to that mix, it seems increasingly likely that you or someone you know might be in need of medical treatment without access to professionals or their equipment. Community networks are good ways to exchange knowledge and information about this sort of thing, as well as ways to know who you can turn to. That said, a community is going to be more resilient against any kind of crisis if more people have some resources and training.

Riot Medicine is a free manual you can download with a variety of useful info.

Where There Is No Doctor is a useful guide that you can either buy, or download chapter by chapter for free.

This is one of many resources for learning to survive heat waves

As with any skill, the more you practice it, the better you will be able to use it in times of stress. Reading manuals does not count as training. It’s better than nothing, but with a community network, you can get together with others to actually try things out. You can also do things like pooling your resources to pay for classes – and even certifications – for interested members of the network.

Water purification

Water is life. Unclean water can be death. Political upheaval and a changing climate can both interfere with the infrastructure that provides drinking water, so having the means to make unsafe or uncertain water potable is a must. When it comes to pathogens, if you bring water to a rolling boil and keep it there for at least a minute, you can consider the water safe to drink. At extremely high altitudes, a longer boil is probably a good idea.

Iodine tablets or drops are another time-tested approach, and depending on the kind you get you may also be able to use them as an antiseptic for first aid.

Having a filter of some sort is a good idea if you’re dealing with water that’s not clear. If it’s a matter of removing solids from water that you’re going to boil, you can use pretty much any piece of cloth. Again, that’s if you’re going to boil the water. Just cloth alone with NOT make water safe to drink.

There are a variety of portable and stationary filters available for situations from backpacking to long-haul sea voyages. Prices and power demands vary.

The simplest option for emergencies is a hand-pump filter with either paper or ceramic cartridges. Ceramic filters are more expensive, but tend to last longer before you need to replace the cartridge altogether. Filters like this often come with an activated charcoal post-filter that the water goes through after it’s been through the main filter. Where the main filter removes pathogens, the activated charcoal one can help remove chemical contaminants. This is worth having in most parts of the world these days.

A word of caution from personal experience in the use of filters – make sure there is a pre-filter over the intake tube, even if that makes the use of the filter more difficult. If you’re extremely dehydrated, your judgement is likely to be impaired, and you’re going to be impatient for water to drink. Don’t remove the pre-filter. It prevents sand and other stuff from gunking up the main filter, and from breaking the mechanical parts of the whole thing. Trust me when I say you do not want to deal with boiling water and then waiting for it to cool enough to drink while you feel like you’re dying of thirst.

Food storage

Storing non-perishable food is a good idea. It’s a good idea if you’re worried about political unrest, war, or climate change. There have been times when people – particularly on the Left – have been somewhat embarrassed by the notion of “prepping”. It’s sometimes viewed as part of the right-wing “tough guy survivalist” aesthetic, and associated with people who fantasize about being the lone survivor in some apocalyptic scenario, where you have to fight off those too foolish to be prepared.

Whatever your emotional barriers may be, get over them. You should also get over that perspective on disaster prepping.

As with having first aid equipment and training, storing food in case of disasters is a decidedly pro-social practice. If you have food stored, you can share it with those who need it, whether because of disaster, or because of poverty. If you store food when you have the means to do so, you will have it available if you run out of money for some reason. Even without political problems, the global climate is now reaching temperatures not seen since your ancestors looked like rats.

Take this seriously.

There WILL come a time when multiple major food production regions suffer climate-related disasters simultaneously, and the entire planet’s food supply takes a hit. The odds are good that at some point in your future, there will be a food shortage that will be made easier if storing food is the norm in your community. The more people do this, the more resilient your community will be to disasters of any sort, and the more you will be able to strengthen your bonds with each other by providing assistance when it’s needed.

We’ve grown used to being insulated from things like bad harvests and droughts, when it comes to food. That period is ending, and we’re once again entering an era in which our increasingly hostile planet may take away our access to food rather unpredictably.

I’ll be publishing more on this in the future, but for now I’ll say that there is more to maintaining a food supply than simply buying a bunch of rice and beans and sitting on them till something goes wrong. That’s better than nothing, but you would do will to look into methods of rotating food stores. There are some foods that will last more or less indefinitely, but even those can go bad, and as long as you have the resources to do so, your emergency supply of food will be far more useful to you if you make a point of eating it, and replacing it with newer stuff. If you plan on having a large supply of food ready to hand, it’s probably a good idea to make a calendar of some sort to help you remember to eat the older stuff. While building up your supplies will cost extra money up front, compared to buying and eating food as you need it, maintaining an existing supply doesn’t cost extra, as you’re still buying food at the rate of consumption.

As with medicine, practice makes perfect. Maintaining a supply of food against emergencies is a still that most people in the modern world simply don’t have.

Theory, philosophy, and education

Make an effort to understand political, economic, and social theory if you can. It’s safe to assume that you will be exposed to propaganda and efforts at persuasion or misinformation for the rest of your life, as you have been for your whole life thus far. If you’re reading my work, it’s likely that you’re fairly friendly to leftist philosophies like socialism or anarchism, or at least you’re aware that there are a growing number of people who think they’re good ideas. I have to talk about this subject in this manner because for most of recent history – particularly in the United States – economic and political philosophies other than capitalism and liberalism have been demonized or denigrated in one way or another. You may or may not believe me when I say that is the result of indoctrination, but until you actually take the time to understand the philosophies in question, how would you know?

Any time someone tries to convince you that the world today is as good as it could possibly be, you should question that claim. Generally it can be traced back to people who are doing very well under the present circumstances, and would do less well – even if they continued to have good lives – were the world to change for the benefit of those currently doing badly. Like it or not, politics occupy every facet of our lives, and we ignore our own governance at our peril. The current crisis in the United States demonstrates very well that democracy is a form of government that requires active participation and maintenance. As with any system, if you’re going to provide maintenance, you’d better know how it works, and what criticisms exist from people who think that other systems are better.

Study on your own. Study with groups. Seek out knowledge on the internet. Seek it out in multiple forms. Study tactics being used (here’s just one guide for legal antifascist tactics, for example), and look for ways to improve on them. and learn about political and economic theories from those who support them, not just those who don’t want you to support them. There’s value in reading foundational authors and works, but that is not the only valid way to learn theory.

Of particular relevance, right now, is fascism. In case it wasn’t clear, I oppose fascism. It is a vicious, self-destructive ideology that builds cooperation within one group of people by treating other groups as enemies, and blaming them for all problems, in a way that doesn’t really seem to happen with any other political ideology. You’re welcome to find your own sources on this, but below I’ve linked a number of youtube videos that I’ve found to be useful, starting with one from the youtube channel Philosophy Tube that I think should be required viewing for all capable of doing so.

As I mentioned at the top, this guide is – and may always be – a work in progress. It’s as comprehensive as I’m able to make it, as of the most recent update recorded at the top. If you think I’ve left something out, leave a comment with your suggestion and I’ll look into it. When in doubt, look for more ways to educate yourself.

This blog, and its associated podcast, are brought to you by my wonderful patrons, each of whom gives to me according to their ability, that my household might eat according to our needs. If you would like to stand in solidarity with these people, and help support the work I’m doing, you can head over to Patreon.com/oceanoxia to join the Oceanoxia Collective. You have nothing to lose but your chains, and as little as $1 USD/month!