monastery economics 2 of 2

MONASTERY ECONOMICS 2

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I understand that most folks living on the trees of a carbon fuel age cannot see the forest of finite resources.  This is obvious, even as you screech in shock and anger how unfair such a statement is.  What?  You’re living in a city, aren’t you?  Surrounded by hostile Other Colors only placated by Oil Age foods.  The Roman barbarians were bribed too, until they weren’t.  And make no mistake, anyone telling you that xenophobia and unease about Latino’s, Blacks and Muzzies is wrong, they themselves are the enemy.  In times of implosion, everyone different is your enemy ( and so are your friends, but at least not all of them ). 

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Anyone with a chainsaw is ignoring the future of energy contraction.  Anyone who is in trouble if the power goes out.  And I don’t mean the Pretty Pony Princess Prepper Plan of running a generator.  That isn’t a plan for a Less Oil future.  Yet, even if most of the above doesn’t pertain to you, you most likely still, just from a lifetime of relying on extra energy, confuse life without surplus as being not too different than life with.  You have a hard time visualizing any period of time too far removed from our salvaged and stockpiled excess and surplus embedded Oil Age energy.

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No judgment.  It is hard to visualize any alternate reality you haven’t experienced.  That is why fiction is so important.  Not that many stories achieve any other reality, either, instead just repeating the Happy Motoring fantasy.  It is hard to conjure up any post-apocalypse fiction that did a very good job treating reality PAST oil age surplus.  We don’t just have a failure to communicate, but of imagination.  Let’s get a bit less esoteric and I’ll share a better example.  All my life food has never been an issue.  I was always able to graze all day long or consume vast quantities of fat and protein to see me through periods between meals.  Until this last year.

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Finally being sedentary after four decades, I keep wanting to eat less.  I keep pushing to consume less calories, yet my body wants more.  I’m constantly getting into trouble getting to the point of weakness.  Yes, there is old age and blood sugar issues and the like, but the primary problem is that I’m attempting to eat as cheap as I ever did, yet cannot fill up on fat as I used to due to the effects of aging.  This is a new reality for me.  Before, when I needed more energy for more work, I just ate more fat.  My body doesn’t like this sudden carbohydrate fixation.  Even knowing intellectually what the problem is, I’m having problems with its implementation.

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Welcome to your post-apocalypse reality.  Food reality will change-a LOT.  Far less fat and protein and you will notice a marked decrease in energy.  Not all food is created equal, and storage food, even the not so cheap stuff, lacking fats so as to actually BE storage food for the most part ( unless containing hydrogenated oil ), is going to suck compared to what you are used to.  Don’t believe me?  Try going vegan for a time.  Eat extra calories, and it still won’t make a difference.  It will blow.  I’m not discounting the historic grain heavy diet of peasant farmers.  I’m saying, YOU aren’t used to it and can’t compete on performance.

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The die-off will not be a time of dusk to dawn farm labor.  It will mostly be sedentary.  You are hiding out and waiting for the torch and pitchfork brigades to die off, the cannibals to run out of food, and for the bodies to decompose to a safe level.  You’ll have plenty of time to read.  But you have three thousand books.  No one is going to read all those in a year, much less the much shorter time the die-off will take ( surplus food isn’t the issue, just like in countries in Africa just next to a famine.  It is distribution with a transportation network and the fuel for it ). 

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Nor is it just a matter of printing out the books.  Your ink, paper and printer most likely won’t stand up to the abuse.  No, you’ll need to read through and find relevant parts ( remember, the parts that are NOT Oil Age or prepping but post-prepping and post-petroleum ).  Take notes AND index the information for future reference.  Too much gets lost in translation and there will be a need to reference the original source.  Then, you must retype to minimize space ( most printing today is heavily padded and doesn’t need to be as long as it is.  Compare a eighty thousand word book from the 70’s to today.  They are three times as thick today, and that is just wasting paper to increase profits.  Now, add to that the padded word count to increase sales ).

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THEN you can print it out.  Done right, this is no part time hobby.  This is a full time endeavor.  Because after THAT, you have to index the new digest version of everything.  Once the Oil Age items break, you need to know how an old timey method is employed.  Even then, you aren’t done.  Because a one or two time reading might not be enough and you must go back and reread and add to your notes, adding to the index.  And that doesn’t even account for cross referencing specialties.  The odds are, this kind of research, JUST on your own library and not factoring in new sources later, is a profession rather than a hobby.

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And in the post-apocalypse world, rebuilding soil fertility and learning more sustainable farming techniques, very few folks will be able to survive on a NON-food occupation ( farmer or soldier, both are directly involved in food ).  You will find that in a Dark Age, you cannot be supported.  You’ll probably be producing your own food, monastery style, and that entails a diet matching your physical output-less food for less food related work, to allow yourself time in the library.  And, yes, I’m sure the monastery will monetize the knowledge industry it has to partially finance itself, as no village is an island.  For instance, a goat herder who trades meat or milk at a loss to them would get medical advice in the form of a Monk veterinarian, or something similar.

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Or, it might be a less direct system, as once information is shared it cannot be profited off of.  Perhaps the monastery tries out new techniques and when successful shares them with those that help support them.  OR, there is no direct support but instead an indirect military support in times of need.  The people help protect the monks as the monks take all the risks of unknown knowledge and freely share in that knowledge and so they are glad to protect the monks.  Therefore, the monastery doesn’t have to provide for children, wives, kings or soldiers.  Yet even with all that, it will STILL be an austere and mean existence being a monk, as they MUST live on less calories than the peasant farmers to afford the “leisure” of tending to those books.

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That is another luxury we take for granted, cheap books and the leisure to study them.  Post-petroleum will be NOTHING like that, you can be assured.

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