CAUTION: SPOILERS

It's a good idea to stop here unless you've read The Gnoll Credo.

Adrian:

As I say explicitly in the Epilogue, we've got a long way to go, and it's most likely a multigenerational project.  So I see two separate issues:

* What do we work towards? (A return to predatory nature enabled by a change to predatory form)

* How do we survive in the meantime?

This second question seems to be what you're asking.

I see ranching and pastoralism as a much more viable path than farming, for several reasons. And I think pastoralism is what you really mean, but I'll explain.

First, grains are not something we should be eating anyway...and vegetables don't contain meaningful calories.  There's a reason grains are called "staple crops": that huge row of delicious tomatoes will feed one person for perhaps a couple days.  So all that permaculture vegetable/fruit stuff is tasty, but it's fundamentally useless as a survival method.  End of story.

Second, the Amish and Mennonites are the only people who will actually be feeding themselves through farming if TSHTF...and do you want to be living like the Amish?  Aside from the scratchy clothes and stifling traditions, it's a hell of a lot of work...and it'll be even more as the machinery breaks and people have to start planting, seeding, and harvesting by hand or with wooden tools.  Agriculture has always been endless drudgery.

Third, there's very little good farmland out there, and even if you try to grow organically and sustainably, most of it is poisoned by the chemicals used by your neighbors.

Finally, depending on your stored surplus year to year leaves you vulnerable to domination.  Animals can be moved: crops and granaries stay where they are.  "Give me half or I rape your daughter."  End of story.

Taking ranching to a greater extreme, you have the African pastoralists like the Maasai, who are semi-nomadic.

In summary, I see ranching as a more direct and viable path to a predator future than farming.  It's still a lot of work...but you get to eat real food.  And that's basically what Salatin is doing AFAIK.  Dealing with all the plants becomes a luxury, not a necessity.

"I think we've reached a very unique point in human history, where we cannot turn back due to the "success" of modern civilisation, yet we are on an irrevocable path to calamity."

Exactly.  Civilization cannot be "saved".  All we can hope to do is survive the slow collapse of its institutions, and someday, to build something better from the wreckage.  Again, farming leaves you vulnerable to domination.

Do I have plans on a personal level?  First, there's no such thing as "breaking free."  Going rural/"self-supporting" is the opposite of freedom: it ties you to one tiny scrap of land which you can never leave because of the animals, not to mention all the government paperwork and taxes that come with land ownership, house building, and selling food. 

Frankly, performing contract work remotely is the modern version of being a hunter-gatherer -- either that, or traveling around the country performing/dealing drugs -- and it's much closer to living like a predator than tying yourself to land.  But most people want the security of a regular paycheck, and are willing to sacrifice almost everything in order to get it.

That being said, I'd love to associate myself in real life with some people I can trust and understand during the inevitable and ongoing deterioration of the current system.  I used to have plans, and even visited several intentional communities, but I mostly gave them up because 1) you can't do it by yourself and 2) most communitarians are clueless ve*gan hippies with ridiculous "spiritual" agendas and/or have a creepy cult of personality thing going with their leader.  And if there's going to be any cult of personality, it'll be around my own, so...no.

Perhaps, someday in the future, TGC and this site will bring together enough people to think about addressing some of the real-life issues.  But it will have to account for the fact that most of us are socially broken from an evolutionarily discordant upbringing (nuclear "family", schools, and babysitters vs. the gradual transition in tribal life from imitating to participating), and it's impossible to build tribal trust and interdependence instantly out of nothing.

Desire everything, expect nothing.

JS

Adrian:

1. I'm not sure you're thinking far enough ahead.  As I said here, "Seven billion people eating grass seeds at a rate only made
possible by massive energy input from petroleum and rapid depletion of
ocean fish to make up for the lack of complete protein, and at the cost
of rapid topsoil depletion and destruction of watersheds via
agriculture's toxic byproducts, is utterly unsustainable and will collapse under its own weight with or without anyone's help."

Which is just the more long-winded version of "Civilization cannot be "saved".  All we can hope to do is survive the
slow collapse of its institutions, and someday, to build something
better from the wreckage."  So I'm not terribly worried about the short-term problem of regulatory/societal disapproval...that's just something to work around while keeping our eyes on longer-term goals. 

2. It took millions of years, and brains 10-15% bigger than ours, to figure out Late Pleistocene survival strategies.  We're not going to recreate that knowledge in a year of spare-time hobbies.  For instance, I just took a meat-cutting class so I could understand how the hell you cut up a cow into the parts we actually eat...and even that started with aged, hanging quarters. 

Second, as the book mentions, we can't go backwards or we'll just be slaughtered by those who didn't...and our species is in the middle of an awkward physical transition, dependent on tools for its survival.  We've got some biological re-engineering to accomplish along with the social re-engineering.  (More here.)

3. One effect of TGC -- as you've experienced yourself -- is confronting us with these issues and making us think about the solutions.  So: help spread it as best you can!  It's a numbers game.  The more people read it, the more will be interested in the deeper implications.  And you can try to nudge those who seem to understand over here.

I agree that involving ourself with the food chain is an intermediate step, so long as we understand it's not an end in itself.  Being a slave to animals is a step up from being a slave to grass...but it's just the beginning of our journey. 

You raise a good point about old farmers wanting someone to take care of their land...I hadn't thought of that.  Between that, depleted soil from over-aggressive agriculture, and the price premium for naturally-raised meat, such land might be cheap enough to re-establish pastoralism as a viable option.

JS

Adrian:

In the short term, absolutely one must take care to not piss off Authority.  However, there comes a time where existing Authority deteriorates far enough that the political calculus is different: for instance, even today, many second and third-world urban slums are not under the control of the government or police, and I expect that trend to continue.  Northern Mexico is completely out of anyone's control.  Here in the USA, Oakland police already have issued an official list of "crimes we don't bother to investigate anymore".

I'm not sure it matters what the "trigger" for the collapse is...and the high-percentage play is that it's such a slow process that we'll only be able to identify it in retrospect.  In fact, it's happening already and right now, with the financial disintegration of the European Union.  The late 1990s were the apex of American power, and the apex of modern "civilization"...$1 gas and everyone was "rich" from their HELOC.

Of course there is a low-percentage play of quick collapse due to EMP terrorism or a major solar storm...but the likely scenario IMO is everything slowly continuing to become more corrupt, dysfunctional, and broken.  East Africa is experiencing another famine...again, which one might have predicted given that Ethiopia's population has doubled since Live Aid.  Basically, expect "disasters" like the East Asian tsunami, the East African Famine, Katrina, and Fukushima to become more frequent as population pressure pushes all our systems closer to the margins of survival.

If it goes belly-up overnight, well, you survive off of stored food (which you should have), go CHUD once it runs out, and hope there's something left to rebuild from once the rest of the CHUDs die off.  The millions of hungry people from the cities will be out with guns and their last tank of gas, and you can't hide your dairy herd from them all.

As far as that HGL article, remember that the few remaining foraging tribes are on land so harsh and unproductive that we got well into hte 20th century before anyone could figure out any way to make money from it by eradicating the natives.  Accounts of natives in America just after contact are instructive here.  Read this article for a comprehensive counterpoint and overview that neatly eviscerates the HGL argument. 

"Giving them to understand upon what terms they must be received under us," as Governor John Winthrop put it, the Indians were told "Not to do any unnecessary workd on the Lord's day within the gates of proper towns."  Not to worry, replied the sachems:  "It is a small thing for us to rest on that day, for we have not much to do any day, and therefore we will forbear on that day."

I agree: it's not selfish to change yourself first!  Otherwise you're just a demagogue.  Other people cannot be changed: they have to change themselves.  I think the best use of our time is to spread the message, find those who are receptive to it, and not to waste time arguing except inasmuch as one is in a public forum where the undecided might be swayed.  And setting the example is a very convincing argument: for example, I wouldn't be an effective advocate for functional paleo eating if I weren't in strong physical shape myself.

Keep thinking and moving forward...but remember to not lose sight of long-term goals while solving short-term problems.

JS

Adrian:

History always seems much more clear-cut in retrospect: it's difficult to identify major turning points until well after they occurred.  Assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, etc.  That being said, I think the 2008 (and ongoing) financial crisis is a clear marker for "the beginning of the end" of the current world order.

(And not that I'm necessarily buying all that's on that website -- it's just where that particular Bob Black essay happens to live.)

I'm glad you're thinking about these problems: time is growing shorter for everyone, and "permaculture" is a dead end as currently practiced.

JS