How it all started for me

Two events coincided and it all started to mushroom. It went from zero to full speed in 3 months. Event A was that in 4Q08 my stocks took again another dive wiping out about 50% of my perceived wealth. Event B was that in Nov 2008 a friend called me and told me that he thinks the US currency is going to nose dive in comparison to the Euro and that I should see Zeitgeist. (Zeitgeist - Final Edition (2007) Video part 1, Zeitgeist - Addendum (2008) Video part 2, Zeitgeist Movie, The Zeitgeist Movement)

That was the starting point. I was worried about my savings. It took about 1-2 months before I realized it is about a lot more. So, starting from the stock market downturn, I looked into currencies. I learned that in 10 years the Dollar/Euro exchange rate went down by 50%. The dollar lost a lot of value in comparison to the Euro. This lead me to investigate the US currency. So, I started to learn about where the money comes from and who creates it. This led me to the Federal Reserve and its extensions the World Bank and IMF. I hopped from my personal stock market losses to the money, money supply, the Fed and IMF. Next I hopped from money to politics since money controls everything including politics. With elections going on in the US. Who controls the candidates? Does the president control the Federal Reserve or the Federal Reserve the politicians? Then I mentally hopped from money to energy. Some suggest that energy is money or that our currency should by energy. They key point though is that energy has provided us with our economic prosperity and has made us rich. Oil curves and prosperity curves look a lot alike. Next I connected the dots between energy and food. For 1 calorie of food we invest 10 calories of energy. Simple products like corn and wheat require an awful lot of oil. Somewhere I read that 40% of the US oil import is used for food creation and food transportation. That was a big surprise to me. Oil goes into fertilizers, fuel is needed for sowing, harvesting and transportation, oil is needed for the packaging, etc. Soon I realized without oil there will be little food in the supermarket shelves. Next I jumped from oil and food shortages to alternative lifestyles, as in permaculture, growing food in your own backyard, ... Then I started looking into possible approaches: community, alternative energies (pedal power for your laptop and TV, solar for your living room light, wind mill in the backyard), gold, time-based currencies, the Cuban example, the Russian example, the Japanese example, and a lot more.

You see how it snowballed? In 3 months it created an avalanche. I went from stock market collapse to growing carrots on the roof top. I will still need many months to digest it all, months to make a personal plan. Thereafter it will take me years to implement that plan. Hence in Nov 2008 a new decade in my personal evolution has begun.