Linda Sussman wrote me this response to After the Crash on May 23, 2008. I reproduce it in full. I feel deeply grateful to Linda for the depth and fullness of her reading and response to the novel.
Hi, Dear Caryl:
The weather changed, in the space of two days, from an unusually cold spring (it snowed twice while my friend from France was here for two weeks at the end of April) to five days of temperatures in the mid-nineties, even one day at 100, and then immediately back to cold that felt chilling even when one had on sweatshirt and jacket. My brain has not entirely recovered from the foggy diffusion that it experiences when it’s very hot. Even with clouds, wind and rain today, focus is coming only with difficulty and effort of will. Still, I will “soldier forth”as this Memorial Day weekend begins with a reflection about your memorial to the hydrocarbon age, After the Crash.
As I told you on the telephone, I found the book very affecting. It’s overall theme and mood still are with me, as I witness so much that seems “insane” (and increasingly so) in this world that, in more ways than one, wobbles on the threshold. Your clear-eyed and sometimes humorous depiction of the various forms of insanity infecting the crash and its aftermath actually fortifies my own witnessing capacity. I can remember I’m not alone in my dismay and even amazement at the plethora of mis-directed ideas and strategies that are emerging in response to the crisis. (Summoning oil executives to Capitol Hill is just one recent nutty exercise in futility—with, of course, its own high price tag for taxpayers.)
You told me on the telephone that part of your intention in the book was to depict a new kind of human being with new kinds of capacities. You wanted to portray capacities that are not so new as to be of science fiction caliber but, rather, easily imagined as possible next reasonable developments in human beings as we now are. Your comment helped me recognize that I had perceived this newness in the quality of thinking and feeling of the characters, and maybe in their quality of willing as well. (Perhaps writing this letter will bring the latter more to awareness.)
Thinking, feeling and willing which seem to be flying increasingly asunder in our current era (as Steiner predicted), appear more connected in the characters in your book. I think this is revealed particularly in how shame is felt and thought-about in that post-hydrocarbon world. On page 11, the narrator comments: “It was left to the post-hydrocarbons to discover shame in the deep places of the earth where oil had once been.” The positive benefits of shame and the post-hydrocarbon practices which bring it to individual and collective consciousness are strong threads throughout the book.
It’s an echo, it seems to me, of the medieval idea of shame as a virtue. My conception of the medieval view is that shame offers a clue to one experiencing it that s/he has done something far below his/her own better self, below his/her preferred code of conduct, below his/her ideal and vision for a better world. This sense of the word has almost been obliterated in our times. Shame now is mostly viewed as psychological dis-function, something to get rid of (avoid, escape, explain away) in one’s life.
While there certainly are versions of shame that are self-defeating and lacking in generative power, the way shame is experienced in After the Crash actually provides a platform for action, a first step for people in that post-hydrocarbon world to bring their actions into alignment with vision. Shame arises both in concepts (thinking) and evaluative perception (feeling) in your post-hydrocarbon world: “...late-Hydrocarbon Era prophets and philosophers argued that nothing in human nature was innate except the capacity for self-transformation according to the perception of necessity, provided that the perception was sufficiently thorough and rigorous, and grounded in the depths of the humblest emotion of remorse....” (Pg 143)
“Thus it was something of cosmic irony that the Hydrocarbons finally expired through thirst, rather than through lack of oil. Those who survived had learned to weep.” (Pg 60)
Shame is experienced and treated so differently in that post-hydrocarbon world from the way it is viewed in our world that it almost seems to need a different word to designate it. At a Non-Violent Communication workshop I attended last weekend, they used the term “beneficial regret” for things we have thought, felt or done that were violent toward self or others. This does not seem strong enough to replace “shame” in After the Crash, but it’s aimed in the right direction, akin to “the humblest emotion of remorse.” The quote below illuminates a line that has heretofore “stumped” me in an otherwise favorite poem by William Stafford (“A Ritual to Read to Each Other”) which is enclosed. The line goes, “I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty/to know what occurs but not recognize the fact”:
“...Was the Hydrocarbon-Era knowing achieved at the expense of the faculty of seeing? Was guilt a normal or special feature of being able to see, so that the “knower” would tend to suppress the “watcher,” in order not to have to experience guilt? Was it this suppression of guilt that caused Hydrocarbon Era people to ravage the earth with no thought about the consequences to their children and grandchildren? Or was the guilt that the post-hydrocarbons felt a new faculty, a new perception, which had been developed as a tremendous reaction against the Hydrocarbon Era’s incredible blindness and self-satisfaction?” (Pg. 51)
A second theme, even more fascinating to me, was the somewhat wispy indications your narrator gives that time is viewed and experienced differently in that post-hydrocarbon world. The first mention of this theme, on page 19, is followed by several others throughout the book: “The propulsion of going to other places had pretty much come to a halt with the depletion of fossil fuels, so that “going” somewhere now meant in a temporal sense rather than in a territorial or geographic sense....The difference between propulsion and movement struck the post-hydrocarbon mind very forcibly.”
I mentioned to you that, in his book The Ever Present Origin, Jean Gebser says that the shift from mental-rational to integral consciousness can only occur as the concept and experience of time changes. He refers to time as “an intensity,” one of the constituting elements of Reality experienced in four dimensions (rather than our current three). Rudolf Steiner says, as well, that, in the 20th century (and beyond?), humanity will experience as immense a shift in our relationship to time as happened in regard to (earthly) space during the Age of Explorations. So, one theme I’m watchful for (in art, literature, philosophy, science, etc.) is just what this change might entail, might feel like. I think your book contains very intriguing indications, based in viewing oil itself as a time phenomenon (which certainly added “intensity” to life in this world). Here are some more thought-provoking quotes related to that subject:
“...You know how temporary everything is now.” She reflexively looked in the direction of her kitchen clock, which had long since stopped running. “Except that it’s not temporary at all now, you know, everything being so permanent.” (Pg. 36)
“...for a long time—a long time, remember, in those speeded-up days might mean as long as a decade...”(pg. 38)
“...a lawsuit against the Hydrocarbon Age on grounds of ‘theft of the future’” (pg. 49)
“It was called the Hydrocarbon Holocaust.....but, when it first happened the stillness came, and it was as if a giant holiday had been declared....
At first, there was the enormous collective sigh of relief. There could be no thought or worry for the morrow. There was no tomorrow. There was only now......Time, momentarily, was suspended.....Whatever it was, it did not last long, or perhaps it did last long. There was no way of knowing....
This period could be likened to a festival in which everyone was present but none rejoiced. And yet there was a quiet cheer, a kind of release from burdens, just by the fact that everyone was experiencing it. There was nothing to know and yet there were only questions.” (Pg. 63)
“That was the real Crash, the Crash of the tomorrow-mind. Time began again like an animal endangered, leaping from the bushes with a ferocious snarl and bared teeth. There was only to be tomorrow and impoverishment, tomorrow and being bereft, tomorrow and being uncertain about the priority of the tasks to be done. Mountains of tomorrow crashed all around those who were left standing in the plain.” (Pg 64)
“Did the people who built those monuments have any idea of how they were using up time? Because that’s what they were using, in a way. The product of time, of long, ancient, geological time If they could have balanced every drop of oil they took with something that actually cost them something!–things might have turned out differently. Or even if they had factored into the price of oil the real price!—the price of taking and using up all that time!”
.....The price for the post-hydrocarbons was to live not in the peak of the present but in a valley of incessant remembrance...” (Pg. 96-97)
“People with what I have,” he said, with no trace of a stutter, “let time rule over them. Other people try to rule over time. You see what it gets them.” (Pg. 118, autistic stutterer William to his sister, Sas)
“If you have ever sat by the bedside of a person who is dying, you learn that it is not easy to die, and in fact the person undergoing this experience must concentrate all his forces to the attainment of it, lest death slip from his grasp....Each moment is like a giant, slow step, each one a little weaker than the last, as if time itself became hesitant in the presence of the inexorable...” (Pg. 148; such a gorgeous evocation of the quality of time in the process of dying!)
“The weighing or disposal of future events was an activity which the post-hydrocarbons took very seriously...(pg 141)
This compost of shame and (the resulting?) different relationship to time seems to fertilize a call for a new kind of thinking----not in the content of “what” is thought but in “how” thinking is accomplished so that it then might help humanity, rather than further embroil us in confusion, delusion. The call for a new quality of thinking carries forth some of the things you explored in Consecrated Venom. Pages 80-85 give the most concerted attention to this theme and, for me, represent a path-breaking anthem for truly generative thinking. Those pages were the highlight of the whole book for me. (I wanted more—amplification and especially a specific example or two of thinking-as-complete-gesture.)
As another preparatory condition for the new thinking, the narrator in After the Crash extols the energy-giving benefits of having to deal with “real-life stuff”----how to get food, water, clothing and shelter, how to work cooperatively with others to survive----- as distinguished from the exhausting confusion of abstraction(s) that characterizes the end of the hydrocarbon age. I smiled at this observation on pg. 74: “The Crash had little immediate effect in the American inner city, which had already seen the reduction of minimal civic amenities over several generations. There was little in most cities left to damage. The only real difference the Crash made was that crime and theft were committed with purpose instead of, as before, at random. If anything, Board scores in inner city schools improved as a result of this infusion of reality to life.”
Part of the confusion for folk in the hydrocarbon age has been the arguments (among those who argue such things) about just what is “real” in the world. I guess the Hydrocarbon Age allowed the luxury of such debate. Postmodernism, as I understand it, doubts that anything is “real” except the (constructed) “unreality” it declares to be the only “reality.” (I appreciate so much how Ken Wilber respects—and concisely describes–the strengths of postmodernism thought and, at the same time, is unrelenting in his critique of its debilitating weaknesses.) After the Crash recognizes the problem: “Among people who continued to think that the real world existed and that it should be taken into account, there emerged various arguments about why so many people apparently didn’t.” (Pg 40)
“...The Hydrocarbon Age was truly liberal in dispensing rights, but the question as to the preservation and permanence of these rights when times became lean was yet unresolved.
One of the questions animating the post-hydrocarbon age was whether the liberalization of society was symptomatic of true moral progress, or whether it was a by-product of the riches of cheap energy that the Hydrocarbons had enjoyed.......matters such as food, clothing, water, and shelter had returned from the margins to the center of human existence once again, and it was becoming difficult to argue that every one should have the same rights and privileges when the result of this argument would mean that everyone should starve....
....the ruins of the Hydrocarbon Age....were both physical and intellectual.....all of this enormous superstructure of centralization was, lacking the energy basis to run it, as so much dust in the wind. (P. 65)
Another pre-condition for a new way of thinking is the “energy awareness” which those surviving into the post-hydrocarbon age must develop (as part of what helps them to survive). Today, “energy awareness,” pretty much refers to the material level (oil, electricity, wind, solar, nuclear, etc.) The post-hydrocarbons certainly have that level of awareness, as shown in your amusing depiction of their being able to purchase things only by giving their time to generating energy for the retailer (on a treadmill or like piece of equipment.) If nothing else, the time entailed using that medium of exchange would quickly curt-tail shopping sprees!
I felt edified by the more subtle aspects of energy awareness that your post-hydrocarbon people practice. Here are some quotes pointing to the arising and multi-faceted quality of “energy awareness” in your post-hydrocarbon era:
“I had always thought that scientists knew what they were doing. But when the energy shortages came on, I realized that they didn’t know, or rather, the things that they did know didn’t make a whole lot of difference in this new situation........”I came all this way to learn something just really simple and basic in the end,” he said, “I realized I could not create the energy I needed.....”
Sas nodded. “It’s a shock when you get energy awareness, I mean when you really get it for the first time like that. It’s like being woken up suddenly from a deep sleep....” (Pgs. 42-43
“......Economics was in the process of reverting to its primary functions, an activity having to do with the home....” (Pg. 75)
“....the human condition is a social interchange. If you found a support system, a tribe, a family, or a communal project, you had a chance to survive in this new low-energy world and even make a contribution to it. If you didn’t, if you insisted on maintaining yourself at the expense of others, your fate was sealed...(Pg. 108)
“....The route of personal justice was facilitated by mediators rather than lawyers, and it indicated that a more thorough thermodynamic awareness had penetrated society by this time. The process of punishment and restitution was seen as an energy problem and it was addressed primarily as a problem of energy....” (Pg.111)
“...The purpose of punishment was to confront the perpetrator with the necessity of gaining access to his own destructive energy through the experience of feeling guilt and remorse. But for many perpetrators in the post-hydrocarbon era, the prospect of feeling guilt and remorse was worse than the prospect of being locked up.” (Pg. 112)
“The purpose of a mediation session was to enable the wrongdoer to attain to a participated perception in the energy processes of his or her own life. The post-hydrocarbons were very aware that all of life’s processes unfold within an energy budget.. (Pg 149)
“..the purpose of the meeting was to create satisfaction and dissatisfaction—satisfaction on the part of the wronged party that the case had been narrated, leading to the possibility for justice and restitution; dissatisfaction on the part of the wrongdoer because by hearing the narrative he or she might gain access to feelings of remorse for the action committed..(Pg. 151)
“Pete thanked everyone for coming to the meeting. He acknowledged the quality of emotional communication that everyone had sustained, even quoting the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead that “the energetic activity in physics is the emotional intensity entertained in life’” (pg 154)
“As in so many other areas, the realm of sexual relations had changed considerably since the Hydrocarbon Age. The collapse of the hydrocarbon consumerist society had, in effect, removed sex from the economy. This removal took some getting used to. If sex was not to be used in order to sell products or books, of what use was it, other than the obvious need to propagate one’s kind?
Post hydrocarbons were very interested in energy, and that energy evoked by sexual attraction was undeniable....In a way, the consummation of this energy interested them less than its evocations....(Pg. 119)
“...the mutual decision between a woman and a man to enter into a companionship for the purpose of re-creating the energetic evocation—this was considered the highest possibility for the man-woman relation, and entirely in the spirit of the original sacramental function of marriage. The post hydrocarbons in effect retained the sacrament and dispensed with the marriage..” (120)
“...the true dimensions of human existence became revealed to post-hydrocarbon people to the degree that they understood that humankind can never “save energy.” Humankind cannot “save” that to which it is perpetually indebted...(Pg. 142)
So what are the indications, in After the Crash, of this new thinking? (As I’ve already said, pages 80-85 are the most complete (but not yet VERY complete) exposition of this theme. but, of course, I won’t quote them here.)
“Perhaps the remembrance of this ghostly quality of Hydrocarbon-Era experience caused post-hydrocarbon era people to emphasize their own viewpoint. To dwell so often on how they thought and felt. The response to events assumed as great an importance as the events themselves.....(reporting their experience of the crash with such expressions as, sic).”What I thought was my life had just evaporated and there was nothing the same of what it had been”
or “Thinking came from some other place—not thinking about things but from them, or it was as if things were thinking themselves through me”.....It was if the Hydrocarbon Era had been a limb that had been suddenly amputated, and people were adjusting to not having the physical limb but still feeling it. Only it was not an arm or a leg that was missing but a habit of thought.”(Pg. 23)
“The Hydrocarbon Era was an age of machinery, and as far as its medicine was concerned, it interpreted the human body as a machine like any other. The science of potentization was an alien concept to the Hydrocarbon mind. “Substance” was the general background of the world, the faded scenery that had merged into ‘stuff” or “things.” When pressed, a Hydrocarbon would be forced to admit that substances differed in their “molecular structure,” but that was as far you could get....Try to point out the nutritional difference between an apple and a potato chip, try to distinguish between ‘substances” and “forces,” try to talk about the dynamic qualities latent in “things,” and you would get a smile of contempt for your pains. You would be dismissed as a “mystic.”
.....But when the Crash came, and the cheap energy was gone, and the costs of the machine model became exorbitant, the standardized mind found itself squeezed once again up against the reality of substance. The cheap energy that had once powered the world was no more, and in the void left behind, it was apparent that the stuff of the world differed in its qualities, potentials, and effects. The energy-differentials in substances became the new frontier.”
“I think it was this feeling of being in the dark, of being at a loss, that I remember so clearly of my Hydrocarbon-Age experience. You could turn on the lights, anytime day or night, but the light of knowing yourself, knowing how to cope with a situation–this kind of light was dim.....when the oil and gas began to give out and people were worrying about the real difficulties of electrical generation in the face of declining resources. For the first time, it was as if knowledge....actually corresponded to what was going on in the world. You might not know how you were going to generate electricity, but your lack of knowledge didn’t cause yo to feel lost. On the contrary, your lack of knowledge gave you light and certainty, for at least you knew that you didn’t know...
...the Crash, the shortage of energy, caused a great many people to become connected to reality through not-knowing, through this feeling of lack...And yet this not-knowing was not the same thing as ignorance.
.....The known world was shrinking rapidly, and the unknown and the uncertain were expanding in all directions at once. People felt a solidarity with each other in this unknowable realm, and this is what became so important. (Pg 160)
On page 103, Sas is offering an introduction to her book. (By the way, I so enjoyed your description of how ideas and texts come into being—and are tested--- through multiple conversations, dialogues and debates among the post-hydrocarbons. This co-creative approach, this “thinking together,” is one of the new expressions of will shown in the book.) I thought her words were an apt description of YOUR book, After the Crash, and wondered if you recognized it as such?
Sas continued with her introduction. ‘Often it is funny, because human life is often funny. ‘The human comedy,’ we have often heard. But at other times the book is serious, or sad, or even bitter. And these too are part of the life we are creating together. And it is a part of this book’s purpose to affirm this life that we share together.
“When I think of this book,” she said, after a pause, “I think it is an effort to give back to time what the Industrial or Hydrocarbon Age took from it. So in that way this book is an attempt at restoration. But I think there is something more as well. I think it is also an attempt to restore common sense or maybe the idea of limits. And as you know, not everyone likes the idea.”
Well, yes, your book is strong medicine. And, yes, I experienced many emotions while reading it: fear, shame, anger, amusement, frustration, helplessness, and wondering at the “why” of it all, the larger pattern. There was also a barely discernible “relief,” or something like it. As an American who has lived her whole life at the top of the unsustainable (and therefore shaky) hydrocarbon pyramid (of goods and services), I have felt–almost daily now, if less when I was young–the weight of being “at the top,” affording my life-style at the expense of others (and the earth herself). I could feel some release of tension in imagining that pyramid tumbling, of the world being “leveled” again, with everybody more or less in the same boat. (I’m reminded of the wisdom of the ancient Hebrew “jubilee” year, the fiftieth year when all debts were canceled and everyone was on the same footing again.)
There is something like “relief” as well in imagining a world returned to an ecological sense of real limits, which means, in practice, that the earth (and her remaining creatures) are finally given a voice (and vote) in the decisions made. Helpless–and fearful---as I feel in contemplating the vision of the future in After the Crash (I don’t even know how to make a candle, for God’s sake!), I feel less helpless than trying to figure out what I can do, with any meaningful effect, in this complicated, gargantuan, over-centralized mess we’re now in. The challenges seem more “human-sized” in that new world, and THAT set of limits makes the book, ultimately, hopeful.
This is a long reflection, one I intend to send to the people to whom I’ve given copies of the book and maybe a few others as well. I hope you regard its length as one way of paying tribute to what you have offered the world through it and as indication of how happy I am to have read it. Even with the length of this reflection, I’ve only skimmed the surface of the important topics and ideas it puts forth. Thank you for sharing it with me.
Gratefully, and with love,
