“The Scottish government has urged motorists not to panic-buy. John Swinney, the finance minister, said supplies of petrol and diesel would last well into May if buying levels remained normal.”

Cripes, when i hear stuff like that I want to go out and fill up the tank myself, and I don’t even have a car. Just like our brilliant year 2000 petrol shortages, the complete absence of any shortages is about to become very real shortages through the magic of panicky dumb people!

Personally, I think the government gets this wrong every time. Saying “Do not panic” clearly doesn’t work, it just makes it look as if the government has responsibility and then they end up getting blamed for the whole situation. If I was the guvment, I would say:

“If the Scottish people want to deny themselves a steady supply of petrol they have every right to panic as much as they want and make life even more difficult for themselves. It is not our place to stop them. Obviously, the shelves will be empty of any product if everyone goes out and buys ten times what they usually would. It is impossible to legislate against this kind of thing, so I’m glad the Scottish people are getting this opportunity during a time where there is no actual crisis going on to understand that the power to avoid shortages lies exclusively with themselves, and that the only way we are ever going to avoid this kind of thing is if every individual takes personal responsibility to do so, if we all commit to mutual social solidarity to avoid shortages, and if there is communal cultural unity such that it becomes shameful and socially unacceptable to hoard any resource at a time of restricted supply.”

It wouldn’t work, of course. But then, that’s why I’m not a politician. Choosing the most amusing option rarely gets you ahead in the polls.

But there are ways that the dominant paradigms can be improved. its happening all the time.

That’s why anymore I am into free market solutions to social and ecological problems. Green businesses, green architecture, sustainable development.

i think one super-nifty thing to do is to share stuff with people.

There you go, perfect! I’ve been finding more and more people who believe in this same basic principle lately. And it works out so well!

a couple of other thoughts that came to mind:

- the ‘on the ground’ food shortage at costco etc. is currently limited to white rice. apparently whole pallets of brown and basmati rice are still sitting there. i find this pretty amazing, considering the nutritional value of white rice is so low. i’ll gladly exchange a bag of white rice for someone else’s brown rice any day of the week.

- something you don’t hear much about when considering the people this is affecting: in order to buy bulk food, you need a car of some kind, and in many cases you need to be strong enough to carry the food. so if you’re too poor to afford a car, or too sick/weak to carry a 50 lb bag, how does this affect you?

For example:

http://www.reuters.com/article/oddlyEn...;feedName=oddlyEnoughNews&rpc=69

KINSHASA (Reuters) - Police in Congo have arrested 13 suspected sorcerers accused of using black magic to steal or shrink men’s penises after a wave of panic and attempted lynchings triggered by the alleged witchcraft.

My question becomes: what, then, is the appropriate behavior to model and exhibit in such a circumstance so as not to unnecessarily spook the herd and make things worse than they need to be?

Well, With dogs according to the theory of “circuits of consciousness” the first two circuits are the same as we have. The bio-survival circuit and the emotional territorial circuit. But what makes us both more advanced and also screws us up more is the third circuit-the time binding semantic circuit.

Through this circuit, people can get stressed out by imagining worse case scenarios even when nothing is going on. We build mental models and constructs. Dogs don’t have this problem.

I also would relate this to the enneagram. I think a lot of people that write on the internet are enneagram 5 “the observer.” They naturally fall into it.
This is a type I am familiar with. The pitfall of this type is that they often get really caught up in mental models they build. That’s why there is so much of this dark conspiracy theory stuff, peak oil, the crash etc. But then dogs don’t worry about that shit. In a way its not really real, otherwise dogs would react to it too.

It is possible to predict trends, but there is a point where people just get caught up in dark imaginings.

So anyway, the sign of leadership, is to take responsibility for real problems and to implement a plan to solve them. That is what it means to integrate from enneagram 5 to enneagram 8 “the leader”