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Politics : Rat's Nest - Chronicles of Collapse -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (4288)	6/11/2006 6:24:30 AM
From: Wharf Rat	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 24206

Preparation for the Future (MORE Thoughts For 30-somethings ) Written by Stephen Balogh Wednesday, 07 June 2006 I wrote this article 13 months ago, and while I am proud of the steps that my family has taken over that time, I can see that I still have many goals to accomplish. I am republishing it in its original form, with an update, and a few more "thoughts for 30-somethings." -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Well, I have been digesting The Long Emergency, by James Howard Kunstler. It is a bleak vision of the future of America, with declining oil supplies. I, like the author, would not live to see many of the changes that he describes in his idea of the future, but I do believe that there are many things that people in our generation could do to prepare to face any eventual hardship. I will lay out what I plan to do personally to get myself, my finances, my family and my home more self sustaining, and ready for whatever may come our way.I, and others my age have grown up in a time of plenty. Most of us are used to an abundant opportunity of education and employment, compared to any time in our nations history. Born after Vietnam, witnessing the end of the cold war, seeing decisive victories in the first Gulf War, no causalities in the Bosnian conflict, we have seen little in the way of war growing up. (No disrespect for those who have lost their lives fighting for our country during our developmental years.) Our battles were fought in our imagination with sticks and toy guns, or against aliens on video games. The Dow Jones Industrials were at 703.69 on Jan 1st 1975, and as I type the Dow closed at 10,471.91 this past Friday. This is a 1,448% gain in my lifetime. Energy prices, unemployment and interest rates fell. Home ownership, investment in the stock market and personal wealth increased. Luckily, our generation can still remember a time without cable TV, with rotary phones, playing outdoors and biking through the neighborhood without a care in the world. Computers entered the home in our youth but were items of mystery and functionality vs. items of necessity. We had sketchpads to fill with our art; we had endless sheets of loose-leaf paper to write our stories on. We read books. We read more books, until the words on the pages turned into beautiful and profound worlds in our minds. We listened to the Top 40 countdown on our new AM/FM Walkman silently in the backseat, while our parents enjoyed a moment of silence in the front seat. (Or, sometimes we’d sing loudly and badly, as if everyone should be hearing the song we were experiencing larger than life between those two orange foam pad earphones.) It was a wondrous time to grow up. I seldom take the time to think about it now, in the hectic grown up world that we live in now. But we do have that time somewhere back in our memory, I fear for the generation of kids who do not. much more groovygreen.com