The Real Realists Are Thriving

The way out of the mess we're in is from the bottom up

Image by Elisa Collucci

It’s the 2023 Winter Solstice, the original Christmas when the longest night of the year does summon up dark musings. One of the darkest is by CJ Hopkins, American satirist ‘living’ in Berlin, writing his final Substack post for the year 2023.

One by one, opposing demographics are being mindfucked into aligning with The Powers That Be and going full-fascist, almost as if the whole global-ideological system were going totalitarian, and what it needed to do was whip the masses into a mindless, hate-drunk, frenzy of zealotry, and pit us all against each other, and then switch the sides and do it again, over and over, until we don’t trust anyone or anything, and we literally can’t even think.

I admire Hopkins, currently fighting the German government no less, for his survival as a writer and a Mensch. And I wish him well though digesting his posts is not fun and I often just skim them. I know, this is weak of me, but I find myself somewhat allergic to the entire herd of doomy writers/thinkers/analysts, all of whom appear to be singing from the same songbook. Furthermore, I’m not alone in this. We’re all somewhat exhausted by the Bad News. And while Hopkins is certainly not ‘mainstream’ those that are, the likes of the historian Neil Ferguson, the economist Jeffrey Sachs or even Mearsheimer at the University of Chicago, also sound disillusioned and worried about the state of the West. Meanwhile, the ARC has marshalled all the hope that’s left and turned it into some kind of movement to save us from ourselves.

In sum, the elites are worried; the system is fraying, and they think it’s up to them to save it. The last thing they want is someone else to take over. More than anything else, they fear that ‘we the people’ will get our hands on the levers of power. That we will free ourselves, stop listening to them and somehow manage to thrive amid horrible conditions. (See Hopkins).

To them I say, Get lost, indeed, you already are. It’s time to let the great unwashed, the ‘ordinary people’ have a go at running this show. I seem to recall that this was the original idea behind ‘democracy’, wasn’t it?

Fortunately, this is already happening all over the world. It consists of young or middle-aged, single, or coupled people doing what we in NA used to call ‘homesteading’. This means living a rough, physically demanding life on the land in a tent or a camper while you build a permanent home, till fields, learn skills you never thought you would master, and in the end, have a house and land of your own without drowning in debt.

In other words, Thrive. Independently. Imagine that! (Einstein said that Imagination is more important than intelligence). This is happening in a time of extreme housing shortages that our elite overlords have bestowed on us. I believe that the response of these young people is a sign of things to come. Right now, there’s only a few, granted. But as we know, change comes about via the persistent efforts of small dedicated groups of people. And that is surely what they are.

What the hell am I talking about? Let me confess that I recently joined in the millions of people who are watching YouTube videos of other people cleaning up and laboriously renovating stone huts in the Italian Alps, Portugal, France or even in North America. He are three of my personal faves: Martijn Dooler, a multi-tasking guy from Amsterdam:

Or the Newbys, a young couple from Britain with a toddler completely rebuilding a ruin in Portugal while having another kid.

https://www.youtube.com/@TheNewbys

Or how about a couple of broke but smart Architects who slaved in agriculture for a year while living in a van, saved their dough and bought a collapsing hut in Italiy with that money. And then figuring out how to get free money from the Italian government to renovate it in classic environmentalist style. https://www.youtube.com/@ateliermavi

In fact, just about everyone involved in these lengthy renos is mindful of using environmentally friendly materials and living with a light footprint on the earth. This idea seems to have taken root so to speak; it’s endemic. And that’s a good thing because it demonstrates a practical as opposed to extremist position on the increasingly insane, destructive ‘plans’ around ‘climate change’. These people are handling it with grace, quite literally, while online the shrieking of the extremists continues. Why does anyone listen to these demented people? (read Hopkins on that).

Perhaps the smartest thing we could do is to simply ignore them and focus on The Real Realists, which is what I am dubbing my new YouTube friends. These five people are just handy examples, there are hundreds more: it’s a Thing, a really Real Thing ironically working because of the Internet and YouTube.

After spending several days binging on this stuff, I had to ask myself what is so inherently fascinating about watching other people do backbreaking labour on rotting old houses? Is it something simple like we just get a kick out of watching fellow humans do the literally heavy lifting while we lounge about or is it the voyeur factor, or what?

Well, it is that, of course. But there’s more. For me, it has become a metaphor for where we’re at in the current low point of Western Civ: we’re just beginning to realize that if we want anything in this rotting building, our Culture, to improve so we can begin to enjoy life again, Ourselves. We must strip the Culture back to its foundations so we can remember who we are, clean out all the intellectual debris, knock down useless discipline walls, heave new roofbeams in place, rewire and replumb the structure according to environmentally friendly principles, free the garden of noxious weeds, pour new cement floors, and install efficient heating systems. This is the most humongous DOY project ever undertaken. You can do this literally and join Martijn Dooler in his patient quest for the perfect stone house or you can engage with the metaphor and begin standing your ground whenever someone tells you something you know is BS, a lie, or a clever scheme to defraud you of your liberty. You may have to fight City Hall, after all. This isn’t easy. It may be the hardest things we ever did.

I can see no other way. The Elites have betrayed us; or they have fumbled badly. Either way, they have failed spectacularly in a time of crisis and confusion that they have largely orchestrated themselves.  It’s time for the rest of us to steer this ship before it turns into the Titanic. We’re on our own. Forget them, find your own homegrown solutions. Talk to your neighbours. Find new allies. Go Native if you will

This is what I am going to think and write about during 2024. I will actively search out the green, new shoots emerging from the rubble. But first, let’s light a blazing bonfire. It’s time to burn the last 23 years into ashes and begin again.

To all my loyal readers, a Happy Winter Solstice and a Terrific, Productive 2024!!