Ignorance is bliss.

Well put.
Once you become PO-aware, nothing is the same any more.
You have spotted your first "bug" in the system.

BTW, if you have not seen "The Island", it's out on video. Not an Oscar winner, but very interesting from a PO-aware point of view. It shows how a small piece of information can change your entire view of the world.

Holding your sweet child's hand and telling him it will be ok, while the smiling nurse injects them with a huge dose of mercury and a multiple vaccination that will cause years of misery.  

Realizing that most doctors are just the distribution arm of large pharmaceuticals.

Finding out that your government does not work anything like what you were taught, and seeing an election stolen, your government hijacked, and the nation torn apart.  

Finding out your news media has become Pravda, only it's worse because so many people don't know it.

Learning that so many of the myths we learned about our history are utter crap, lacking even a shred of truth.  

Understanding the damage being done to the environment, and feeling powerless to do anything.

Yes, it's made me a cynical bastard, but there is good too.  While it is sad that we cannot just believe what we are told, I have accepted that I must do my own analysis, and make my own decisions - it's a different way of thinking, but rewarding in it's own right.  There is satisfaction in gathering knowledge and making good decisions.  The concerns over what the future will bring weigh heavily on my wife and I, but there is still the love of our children, and the knowledge that I have a very capable partner and we'll deal with whatever comes together - it will not be the first challenge we've faced.  

So enjoy the holidays, try to focus on the simpler pleasures, and don't mourn the passing of traditions that don't matter anymore.  And if it makes you feel any better, those Christmas lights don't really use that much power!

Back in August I penned this for a young american friend of mine, thought it might be enjoyed by some here.

<BOLD>Who killed the 'American Dream'?</BOLD>

Back when there were about half as many humans, before Intel made the first integrated chip (1974), when mainframe computers about as powerful as modern wristwatches were just becoming available costing $ millions and were the size of rooms, I read a book. "Limits to Growth" was written by a handful of academics who wanted to try out these new computers for modelling and forecasting something. Nowadays they'd probably try it on stocks and shares, then they modelled the future of the human race and its interaction with this planet. Some people walked around with their eyes open in those days and were brave enough to look at meaningful things.

The computers were slow, the models simple, the results probably mostly inaccurate, but it was the first time people had systematically considered human and economic growth and when it would run into the natural limits of this planet to support them. There was no simple answer but the one I remembered was: things start to run out around 2016 give or take a few years. More than 40 years away, plenty of time for us smart humans to fix things. Ah, the optimism of youth.

About four years ago I was seeing mention of 'peak oil' and began looking into it. Realistic estimates (from ASPO) then were that it would happen about 2012, still over 10 years away but starting to get close - time for me to begin thinking of what I should be doing, and where, when peak oil hit. Well, in these last 4 years I've watched with growing concern as that estimate has moved to 2010, 2008, 2007 - the estimated date for peak oil and the present date have been rushing together at similar speed. Like two galaxies colliding the first impacts have already happened and their ripples have begun to distort and rip our reality, though few have noticed yet.

Peak oil brings the end of the 'American Dream', the US economic and financial systems have minimal chance of surviving it, the next 10 years will bring at best the halving of wealth of the american people, or halving US population, or maybe both, or maybe worse.

In the latter half of the 1970s the american people elected a truly honest president, it coincided with the last energy crisis. He  set out what the USA must do to become virtually independent of foreign energy supplies. It never happened, he wasn't re-elected.

Had the american people, congress and senate supported Carter and implemented the energy policy that he spelled out very clearly the world would be very different today and peak oil would be at least a decade farther away. We would have time to change further and the US would already be at least half way on that positive road. But, as Carter said "There is no way to avoid sacrifice...". That didn't sound nice so the american people turned their back on truth, embraced illusion, and postponed the (then small) sacrifice. Thus was humanity and this planet betrayed.

There are a number of answers to my question but I am thinking of two specific ones: an individual, and a group of people. No conspiracy, both obvious and inter-related.