I’ve been in a rut for the past week or so, feeling kind of paralyzed. I can’t get anything done, nothing is calling to me. I feel no motivation.

This is a good sign, now that I picked up this journal and I’m starting to write. Maybe I can get the energy flowing again.

I’m still mulling over the issue of my place in this crazy society. I had a crazy, irresponsible thought the other day. If our consumer culture is destined to fall with the depletion of the world oil fields, why not hasten it along by consuming as much as I possibly can, and encouraging everyone else to do the same? The faster we deplete the earth’s resources, the sooner will come our culture’s day of reckoning. And the sooner the earth can begin to return to balance.

It’s clear no one is going to change their ways until it’s way too late, until there’s no time left to begin adapting to the changes that are necessary. People love to live in denial for as long as they possibly can. So they will, inevitably.

What could be happening, what should be happening, won’t. Moving out of the suburbs, developing local resources to meet the community’s needs for food and goods, getting rid of cars, re-learning the old skills--using draft animals, hand tools, carding, spinning, weaving, hunting, gathering, preserving food, saving seeds, chopping wood, making charcoal and lye, pottery, baskets, raising animals, butchering, smoking, tanning leather, developing true community where neighbors come together with neighbors to help build, grow, cook, preserve, or whatever.

It won’t happen. Who wants to give up what they have? Who wants to admit that their lifestyle is untenable, destructive? If the choice is between obliviousness and feeling the full moral weight of our choices, why not remain oblivious?

I’ve come across a web site on eremitism, which has been some really fascinating reading. I’ve always considered myself a bit of a hermit, but it’s been especially good to come around to these writings now, when I’m in the midst of my exploration of voluntary simplicity. Simplicity has led me to think more deeply about silence and solitude, which has brought me back around to my need for an eremitic lifestyle. In stillness and solitude, the world of spirit opens up. I long to inhabit the world of spirit.