A Brief Comment on Communicating Our Concerns With Loved-Ones

I was just responding to an email from a reader, and he mentioned he was finding it difficult to communicate his concerns about preparing for the future with his loved ones. This is something I hear people voice again and again, and in "A Blueprint for Preparation" I discussed how this issue of personal communication is one of the crucial steps that I believe people need to begin to address, in spite of the many difficulties and pitfalls it may bring up. I feel that it's extremely important to consider how we approach each person, because each of us responds differently to different stimuli.

So I thought I'd offer a more detailed example here. For myself I discovered that my wife needed to hear about these issues from sources she believed were "experts" or "professionals". So whenever I voiced my concerns, she tended to write them off by saying that was just me worrying too much, and that I needed to stop reading all this depressing stuff by these quacks "on the internet" and read something lighter for a change. Thus I found that the more I tried to approach my concerns with her directly, the greater her resistance and blame was becoming.

What helped me out greatly was when she slowly began to discover that other people she knew held these same concerns. That showed her that it wasn't just my "personal" problem, and that perhaps there was something more to all this. And as her acceptance of these issues grew she became more open to recognizing and discussing things...and she discovered even more people who felt "all was not right with the world". Somewhere along the line she began to consider the issue to be a "valid" one. And now I find that, while she still doesn't want to read anything about it, she easily and readily accepts the need to be deconsuming our lives. In fact, she ended up being the first one to introduce the idea that maybe we should leave the city...and is now a driving force in our search for "the right place".

So in responding to the reader's email I thought maybe I should relate this story more publicly. And in case my particular situation rings a bell with others I thought I'd list a few (of the many) 'popular' articles that have very recently begun to pop-up all over the world, and which indicate that the recognition of impending crisis is not a matter of "opinion", but a matter of fact. Perhaps these articles will serve as an icebreaker for discussion. Most of the articles I'm listing are about Peak Oil, because that's the popular topic right now. It's also the most "tangible" and thorough issue by which to approach an understanding of what we face...and the one that best indicates the problems with our modern consumer-culture and the complete change of lifestyle we need to begin embracing. And it's less threatening than reading about population collapse. Still, as is typical of almost all the mainstream treatments of this subject, none of them draws out any of the more dire implications of our situation.

But again I'll caution that your approach to each of your loved-ones is going to be unique, and throwing a handful of articles talking about "doom and gloom" may not be the most helpful course. As a general rule, I'll repeat what I'd mentioned about this topic in Blueprint for Preparation: be prepared that they may not respond the way you think they will; try to avoid letting the discussion become emotional; plan on going slowly, and be ready to gracefully drop the subject for the time being if they become defensive or argumentative; and don't feel you need to cover everything all at once, or even "know it all" -- most likely you're simply trying to open the subject up for future conversations.

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This recent piece in USA Today discusses how the Peak Oil debate is becoming widely accepted as an immediate issue.

The Louisville Courier-Journal profiles one of the many oil awareness groups that are seeking local solutions to our problems.

The San Francisco Chronicle accepts the reality of Peak Oil (and the growing recognition of it in "official" circles), and very gingerly explores what it might mean for the city.

An MSNBC piece, from a series called "After Oil", talks about why alternative energies won't save us.

And on the economic front, the Reserve Bank of Australia voices their concerns that a global economic "meltdown" looms before us.

Comments

[Aaron]

Unless people are in the habit of doing their own research they will almost only believe startling news if it appears in what might be called 'officially sanctioned' news sources. These news sources must convey the right apearance of authority since we all learned at school that nothing is important or has substance unless an authority figure gives it their blessing.

The idea that the internet is a dodgy source of news has of course been officially sanctioned by our normal news authorities (papers, TV etc). In actual fact, the internet is just a medium, we might as well criticise all newspapers or all TV news sources (actually ALL TV news probably is unreliable). Clearly the internet has reliable and unreliable information - we just need to rely on our judgement to deicide which is which. Most of us are capable of learning this task but had our confidence in our own judgement ruined by schooling.

A possible criticism of this line of thought is that there are lots of people who really do think they have good judgement but clearly do not. I figure this is caused by what psychologists call 'projection' whereby we don't want to believe something bad about ourselves so we project it onto other people and in this case it means we think anyone who says something we disagree with or haven't heard before must be an unreliable source of information.

To illustrate; I do a show on my local community radio where I discuss 'fringe' topics like Peak Oil. I talk with confidence and people pay close attention because my voice is coming out of a little box on their table but I'm usually too scared to broach these subjects in private - in fact some of my out of town friends don't even know I do the radio show.

[Eliza]

that's some good advice. your last sentence, I mean.

[Dave]

I am trying to prepare our city govt. for PO and have made several presentations on the subject and have lent them the End of Suburbia DVD. Its seems that there is an acceptance of the idea but they have no idea what it has to do with city govt. They see it as a federal problem or state problem and really are lost about what to do about it. But I keep trying. My close family think I'm simply an overly read alarmist but they grudgingly admit I was squawking about the dangers of global warming arond twenty years ago when Schnieder's book first came out and the more seriously radical Environmental Newsletters started to raise the subject. But to really get into organizing others for what will be a near totalizing pandemonium if it is allowed to happen under the aegis of the "market economy" is dangerous duty and will get one labeled as a radical agitator and I'm not ready for that. The systems are still functioning and I have bills to pay and financial responsibilities to children and others that I feel I must meet. I intend to be in the soup with everyone else when the shit hits the fan.