{"id":201,"date":"2015-02-10T22:19:09","date_gmt":"2015-02-10T22:19:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/letthesunwork.com\/?page_id=201"},"modified":"2015-02-12T08:40:16","modified_gmt":"2015-02-12T08:40:16","slug":"twoworlds","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/letthesunwork.com\/community\/twoworlds","title":{"rendered":"Living in Two Worlds"},"content":{"rendered":"

You’ve learned about peak oil<\/a>, about catastrophic climate change<\/a>, and about overpopulation<\/a>. You get it, you understand that it’s a triple threat<\/a> that’s going to change our lives in fundamental ways. You’ve even begun the ticklish and tedious task of changing the minds<\/a> of those around you. So do you quit your job? Do you withdraw from society?<\/p>\n

No, you live in community<\/a>. So you listen politely as your friends talk about the vacation trips they’re taking, the new cars and trucks they’re buying, the plans they have to move to a bigger house. You crank up the weed eater, the lawn mower, and the leaf blower, and you do what you have to do. But you do it all with a different set of eyes and ears.<\/p>\n

You read or hear about the wild fires in California, or the drought in the Southeast U.S., or a new strain of staph infection having its way with hospital patients and even high school athletes, and you listen for the news reporter to look behind the headline and connect the dots, to say, “and this may be happening because we keep burning fossil fuels that are heating up the earth to historically high levels,” or “and this could be happening because we pump all the beef, poultry, and pork we eat with antibiotics so we can raise them shoulder to shoulder on food they were never meant to eat.” But it never comes.<\/p>\n

If you’re like us, you’re learning the subtle and disquieting skill of living in two worlds. We both have full-time jobs. Lee is a lawyer helping people survive divorce<\/a>; Amanda is a communications consultant<\/a>. We\u00a0have an active social and church life, and many of our friends are unaware of or only marginally aware of our post-petroleum work. Yet Amanda spends much of her spare time, and Lee spends virtually all his spare time, planning for a future dramatically different from what the culture expects.<\/p>\n

Living in two worlds keeps forcing you toward the future. It’s remarkable how much more time we spend than our friends do thinking about our lives and the lives of those we love in the next 10-20 years. Sometimes it seems to us that many of our friends and colleagues are incapable of imagining a future any different from the present. And that’s human, isn’t it? Chris Skrebowski, editor of the UK Petroleum Review<\/a>, says “As a species we’re not very good at predicting the future and even worse at acting on it.”<\/p>\n

Here’s our brief tour guide for living in two worlds:<\/p>\n