Brandon Marshall

I am terrible at predicting the future. More importantly, I am terrible at living there.

The discussion at The Oil Drum takes a more personal nature with me; much of my own history involves looking back toward a simpler time in agriculture. (The account of a “recovering energy engineer.”)

Story from the point of view of a farmer in an intentional community in a post-Peak Oil world several years from now.

American society, as an autopoietic system, by its very energy-intense design, is inclined toward blindness of certain stimuli in its environment… It is well known that any large-scale organization as a system adjusts slowly to alterations in its environment. This suggests that there may be more promise in correcting our vision at the micro level.

Partly by accident I have been without a car for well over a year. What ensued was a suburban adventure through the tract housing that I regard as something like reverse exploration, a search for passage from this new and strange place to something older, familiar and more accessible. The development ringing the city suggests clans of a vast tribe. If they had a common name maybe it would be ‘Suburbanites’.

I would describe myself as a recovering engineer. Technology has been an integral part of my life. At one time I had viewed advancing technology as the answer to all of our problems and the only tool necessary in improving our relationship with the natural world. The last several years have changed that.