Profound thoughts from the chicken run?

[thriftwizard]

I was watching my chickens earlier. They've been in a roofed run since last year's Avian Flu scare, mostly to stop my neighbours worrying. It's a reasonable size; they have straw to scratch in, soil under that to dustbath in, strawbales to jump on & plenty of food & fresh greenstuff. But it was my 13 y.o. daughter & I that built it, in one day, in the pouring British November rain, so it was hardly a professional construction and a couple of the panels have shifted over the course of the last year, so the chickens can let themselves out & potter around the garden whenever they feel like it. There's nothing scarier than a few cats out there.

So how come only a couple of them ever do? They all know where the holes are, but they stay in that run, even when they're bored silly and they've scratched up all the food. Sometimes they pace the wire, begging to be let out - but they can get out! And they seem to choose not to, although the holes are right there in front of them. They only come out when I open the gate, about an hour before dusk, run around a bit then take themselves off to bed. If I didn't let them out, they'd stay in, and if I didn't feed them, they'd starve in there.

Strikes me that a lot of people are just like that too, living inside limits they've set for themselves inside their own heads. Peak Oil & climate change are just too scary to think about, like the holes in the fence, so they're not going to "see" them. And those of us who do think about it are seen as odd, eccentric, maybe even "letting the side down" somehow. I've learnt not to say too much, but I know I'm seen as a bit of an outsider now anyway, as I homeschool some of my kids so they don't have to live (and maybe die) "inside the wire."

Maybe I'm being unduly pessimistic about the way people seem to function in our society at the moment? Just hope the chicken keepers don't let them down...

[Michelle in Ga]

hmmmmmmmmmmmm good points

[Calles]

Deep

[realitycheck]

I appreciate your analogy with the chickens. 

I met with 10 men on the beach last night.  By the fire in the moonlight we discussed what America would look like in 20 years.
Upper tier economically with the most successful in the group politically conservative.  My comentary about the USA legislating itself back to the middle ages, resource depletion and political corruption leading to a dramatic decrease in U.S. and world populations was pure Greespanese:  It got some gasps and seemed to fly clear over or be ignored by a few heads.

There was some banter about Malthus being proved wrong and the need to cut our leaders some slack but as a group we evenly spanned from techno-euphoric exuberance to the secular appocaliptic (thats where I came in).
I was tempted to be dramatic: "None of your children will be alive in 20 years." 


It occured to me that the most successful economically around the fire were total optimists and entrepreneurs.  They see opportunity, rally a team and act on it and reap the rewards.

My observations:
1) Optimism and risk taking are survival selecting traits. It worked for these guys during cheap oil.
2) These successful optimists are totally blind to what is comming.  (Flash to the end of Dennis' "I will Survive" link).

So some of my friends are in the enviable (re:skills and resources) and tragic situation akin to the survivalists who hardwire faith in their abilities and then die due to an oversight.  (A halo effect).

It is another angle to your avian analogy. Blind faith in themselves vs. blind faith in the state or PTB.

So How many optimists does it take to change a burnt lightbulb?
None...they are all convinced the power company will restore the electicity any minute now...

Thriftwizard,  I am hoping you can divine some more wisdom from your chickens.

[realitycheck]

This analogy riles me up because I want out of the coup.

I don't have the resources to prepare the way I'd like.  I will have to partner with a few other chickens to pry the fence up.

Go in together for some land, dig a well, build a kitchen and surround it with gardens, goats and yurts.  But with 90% of intentional communities failing and no potential partners excited about living in yurts, the proverbial hole in the fence looks pretty small.

I could leverage the little pile of federal reserve notes I have and swing big hoping for quick shortterm gains...but oooh I've been burned before. 

Anybody want to live in a yurt?

[carbondragon]

I want to live in a yurt. My wife gave the OK on the basis that i was already a nut when we got married. Some kind of grandfather clause...

[Dennis from Oregon]

Im outta the coop, and its scary as hell.   Note federal reserve notes will not be converted to anything useful in the near future...  ya gotta change your thinking here and its really hard... 

[haveeight]

Isn't it amazing what us chicken lovers see in our birds.  One on my husband's favor saying is "What gets rewarded gets repeated".  Your chickens are rewarded everyday by staying in their coop.  Yeah they go a little stir crazy some times, but they know what keeps them alive.  Staying in the coop.   

Still we're not chickens, and most wouldn't think living in our oil driven world is like being treated like caged animals. But I suppose your point was about group thinking.  Okay humans do that, but humans do have bigger brains than chickens. Yes, there are people out there who are ignoring the hole in our coop called PO.  The government, the media, and even our next door neighbors are more than willing to believe that the oil won't run out, we'll find replacements, etc.
But there are people outside the coop already. All of us on this forum have already seen that hole, gotten out into the backyard and are eyeing how high the back fence is.   

[Michelle in Ga]

Have you seen mad crazed shoppers on the morning after Thanksgiving? Who's smarter, folks or
chickens? (I'll be shopping )

[gylangirl]

Hmm. The chicken coup analogy...

As for myself, I'm amazed that I can be so dissociated a chicken as to go back and forth between the coup and the yard. My acquantances in the crowded coup insist there is no yard so I have learned to nod along as if that's normal. And it is where my chicks still get their food. Then I go out into the yard to supplement. There I meet others who decry the coup lifestyle and I have learned to agree with that too.

Soon the coup will no longer provide and all those hungry coup chickens will spill out into the yard.

Then there is the issue of why the coup had been so well supplied with food all this time. What do they want with us chickens?
Reminds me of a book, Ticker Khan by Bamber Gasgiogne.