iPermie: The Epilog. Words for the Generations

Baby Boom.

This is my own generational cohort. We burst onto the scene in huge numbers and as they said at the time, changed everything. Leaving the generational propaganda aside, now we approach the ends of our years. We haven't really accomplished what we hoped we would do, based on our thoughts and ideas in the 1960s and 1970s. While there have been some notable areas of progression, for the most part we pretty much became what the system designed us to be — super consumers who don't question the status quo but who do as we are told.

The script seems to be problematic at this stage. Millions saw their retirement assets dwindle to almost nothing. People talk about the concept of retirement in the past tense. I hear, "I will never be able to retire," a lot from other Baby Boomers.

Austerity is the word in Washington, D.C., and while much of the controversy about Social Security and Medicare is politically contrived, that doesn't make the controversy less real. Indeed, it predicts continued raids on all social insurance programs. Until the permaculture revolution, governments everywhere will always have all the money they greed for bombs, weapons, and war. Social insurance funds will always be raided before cutting subsidies for big corporations and the military. Since it will take decades to build towards the permaculture revolution written about in Section 13, all of us should plan as though social insurance will be a problem as we get older.

Thus, for all in my generation, iPermie represents an alternative retirement plan. Every dollar you don't have to spend during retirement is a hundred dollars you don't have to save for retirement, at current interest rates. If returns on money increase in the future, to say 4%, then your dollar you don't have to spend saves you twenty-five dollars.

Given the present returns on money, that's not a bad investment. If you reduce the energy cost of your dwelling by $100/month, that's $1200 a year in expenses avoided "forever." You would have to have $120,000 in the bank, at the present rates of one percent per year to earn that much income. If return on money is four percent, then you would "only" need $30,000 to earn that $1,200. Actually, you need a little more, since you have to pay taxes on your income. If you pay 15% to the feds, and 5% to your state, you would need $144,000 in the bank to earn $1440 so you could pay your taxes and pay for the extra $100 in energy expense you incur because you didn't do sensible things before retirement so you would have less expense.

In other words, spend money now, while you have income, so you don't have to spend money later. Get out of debt. Superinsulate your home. Take advantage of passive solar. Do as many of the other iPermie exhortations as are relevant to your context.

I often say that my retirement plan is a super-insulated home with no debt that is really cheap to operate, has plenty of edible landscaping, and is located close to everything I need so I don't have to own a car. People often chuckle when they hear that, but I am serious as the proverbial heart attack about that retirement plan. It will work for me whether or not the stock market is up or down and whether or not the feds actually send me a Social Security check.

Generation X

Generation X, sandwiched between the Baby Boom generation and their offspring, the Millennials, "are doing the quiet work of keeping America from sucking" (Jeff Gordinier). Many of the themes of iPermie are found among the practices of Generation X. Indeed, the rapid growth of the permaculture movement worldwide has largely been a Generation X affair. While the original cohort of teachers were Baby Boomers, the present generation are largely Generation Xers.

The interest of Generation X in issues of environment, race, and class follows the experience of the world during the past few decades. With the rise of access to each other via the personal computer and the internet, issues that once could be safely viewed through the lens of print or analog television gained a new immediacy. While the state has certainly used the computer to its advantage, so have those who oppose the present system, and there can be no doubt that Generation X has been at the leading edge of that trend.

Generation Xers are also at the leading edge of the collapse of the consume/excrete/waste system that has evolved to its present series of impasses, crises, and cliffs. The economic evidence seems to be that they are not earning, saving, and investing at the level of the previous generation. This marks a sea change, since the arc of the developed world has been that "each generation has it better than the previous." That is no longer true. We are not living on interest and earnings, we are consuming natural capital and that is now being played out in the Generation X cohort's economic prospects.

Some Generation Xers are raising children while at the same time caring for aging parents. Squeezed at both ends, many find themselves trapped.

For Generation X, iPermie comes as the codification of things they had suspected all along, but were perhaps not quite sure how to fit them together into a coherent lifestyle. By taking advantage of the design processes described herein, you can find a way out of the traps that modern life lays for you and follow a good-life design that makes sense for you and your family.

The Millennials

The devolution of our present economic systems falls most heavily on the young.

In the United States, half of recent college graduates are unemployed or underemployed. Spain has youth unemployment levels of 40%, the United Kingdom at 19.1%. With the onset of economic troubles 2007-2008, incomes for young people dropped at twice the rate that the general adult population's income declined.

For Millennials, iPermie offers them the opportunity to escape the trap laid for them by the present default system of consume, excrete, and waste. Already known to be more civic minded than previous generations, Millennials may have the least problem with the iPermie exhortation to community.

Since they are the youngest, they have the greatest stake in the future. Our young people will one day inherit the climax of generations of political criminality and economic irrationality. They will have to deal with the issues of energy scarcity and climate instability. The world goes into this time of climax issues poorly prepared for the realities of the future. Capital — both economic and natural — has been wasted frivolously. None of this is the responsibility of the Millennial generation, but they are the ones who will get stuck with the bill.

As such, iPermie offers a lifeline of hope, a design for the future with less chaos and violence and more beauty and wisdom. Everything herein is within the abilities of the Millennial generation to understand and implement and doing so will save them enormous grief and sorrow during a time in their lives when they can ill afford such disruption, danger, and devolution.

Winter is coming. Better get ready.

The ending is nearer than you think, and it is already written. All that we have left to choose is the correct moment to begin. — Alan Moore, V for Vendetta