A Word of Cushion

A Word of Cushion

(Exploring ways of cushioning the deep impact of the latest war in the Middle East, particularly with the sudden exposure of our multiple vulnerabilities)

Let us consider, for one moment, this: Each good we consume comes from somewhere.

Every food ingredient, kitchen condiment, personal care item, and household essential, staple, and indispensable, has a supply chain story.

Some back-stories are simple, some are not. A few are produced right where we are, and can be procured by simply walking or through a short bike ride. The rest comes from elsewhere, somewhere invariably far and they all need fuel to get produced and transported to our doorstep. And they all involve complicated logistics while in transit.

With the disruption in the distribution of oil and gas for fuel, how are we going to get our daily supply of essential things?

Since my expertise is on excessive worrying and overthinking, for once, let us put them into good use today.

We've had a taste of this suddenness during the covid-19 pandemic, but this is a lot worse so many times over because the supply chain of food, medicine, other vital goods, and fuel remained steady after a few days of delay.

For breakfast, where are we going to get our eggs, for example? This one is easy. Our town has several residents who are into commercial poultry and egg production on a moderate scale. We can prevail upon them not to sell outside town. What about the ingredients of our favorite comfort food such as pinakbet? I am pretty sure that we can still buy eggplant, ampalaya, tomatoes, and other vegetables, but I am not so sure about ginger, salt, and bagoong. Baguio vegetables obviously need to be carted off all the way from the highlands.

We are a rice-producing town, so rice is probably safe as long as we have enough in storage that will last us for months. We also have numerous chicken and pig raisers. I am not so sure with our other favorite food items: fresh bangus from Bonuan, galunggong, and other seafood as our source of an essential mineral: iodine.

That's just about the food on the table.

Where do we get the baby's formula milk? The diapers?

And our senior citizen's maintenance medicine? Our hospital supplies?

I have found that these are all imported items. These things all need fuel to be shipped and flown, and airplane fuel is said to be the most expensive kind.

We have no manufacturing industries in our town to immediately support our grocery needs. These all need to be manufactured efficiently, i.e., at economies of scale, and transported within town limits just as efficiently.

As we can see, with the sudden "energy shock," the quick chain reaction and the far-reaching repercussions are not so hard to imagine. Scarcity of fuel means difficulty in transportation, which means sudden spike in costs, while take home pay of workers remain the same. (Come to think of it, price hikes are always a given during crises, but price rollbacks are as rare as, say, the Mindoro bleeding heart, Cebu brown dove, and other vanishing and endangered species.)

The cost is, of course, shouldered ultimately by all of us who buy any of these at the farthest end of the line: lowly consumers.

Let's extend the worst-case scenario. The sudden dearth in food supply may not spell sudden death, but it will mean extreme belt-tightening measures. To cut back on household and corporate expenses, the first one to suffer, because most expensive on the laundry list, is electricity.

This means brownouts galore, even rotating brownouts. And no electricity means a new layer of disruptions, deprivations, and depredations as well.

Scarcity of basic goods and commodities might induce panic-buying, hoarding, and profiteering.

Hunger or widespread famine could spell higher rate of theft and crime, riots, forcible opening of stores and food banks.

Disruption in the supply chain in general could also mean business closures and consequently massive unemployment.

Without oil and gas, will our farmers be able to plant still?

Where are they going to get their fertilizers, pesticides, and other farm inputs?

Aside from corn, do we have feeds for livestock?

Without adequate electricity, will our children be able to continue face-to-face learning or even have online classes?

We haven't even dealt with garbage collection and disposal and emergency services -- both of these use a huge amount of fuel.

Think about the sudden power failure we experience during major typhoons. This means low-batt and dead cell phones, no internet, darkness at night, oppressive heat and humidity by day, and the need to cook right away everything we have stored in our freezers and refrigerators.

Government on all levels will need to state of emergency to empower them to release and realign funds and order and implement interventions minus the tedious legislative process.

On the flipside, the crisis also presents myriad opportunities for anyone who can supply what is lacking onsite through alternative means. They are in the position to reap the reward, the bonanza, the windfall of profits.

The suddenly unemployed can be 'realigned,' like corporate budgets, to new gainful employment. They can resort instead to in situ food production, in backyards, hastily put up DIY greenhouses to grow fast-growing crops. They can also sell local produce locally, through old-fashioned ambulant vending or rolling stores. I figure wagwagan or ukay-ukay stores would make a killing with the marked-down prices of pre-loved items. The skilled ones among displaced workers can provide personal services.

Necessity, they say, is the mother of invention. But it's more likely that, with no other resources, we'll just revert to our Flintstones era or Stone Age way of life.

In our town, that would probably mean resorting to the ancient tangguyob, umalohokan, bandillo publico, messages handwritten and typewritten on paper, and town square face-to-face meetings and grand eyeballs for public information.

For farmers, it would mean going back to the plow and arrow, carabao, cow, harrow, sled, kariton, mortar and pestle, taltagan (giant boat-sized mortar), igar, bayuan, etc.

For drivers, kariton, horse-drawn carromata (karitela), bicycles, pedicab, cow-drawn garong (gulong-gulong, tangkulong), and rafts and wooden boats would be helpful once again. Or good old walking and hiking and marathons for all.

We need to revert to firewood and charcoal and clay stove for cooking, candles and matchsticks for lighting alternative fixture of illumination (think antique and obsolete lampara, etc.), herbal medicine and alternative healing modalities, traditional food preservation methods, ancient, forgotten, and discarded cleaning practices, plain old neighborly sharing of food and water resources, ancient food preservation, barter trade, community pantries, and the like.

Our days and nights without electricity would be unbearably hot and humid, so we need nipa huts, mosquito nets, and hand fans.

But a major dilemma would be: Who still keep those artifacts mentioned aside from the local museum?

We might need to manufacture all these all over again, while finding alternative ways and means to produce and invest in alternative fuel and energy source.

Unless it is a long-running joke without a punchline, we might need to revisit the work of this Filipino scientist who allegedly invented cheap alternative energy by splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen.

Crises, unexpected and unwelcome as they are, can also be blessings in disguise in so many ways.

Our kids -- these lazybones -- will finally be forced to stop their mindless cell phone scrolling once and for all.

These cell phone addicts will suddenly have withdrawal syndrome and rediscover sunshine and natural vitamin D, parlor games, monkey bars and seesaws, backyard games like marbles and spider fighting, and various sports as better alternatives to digital dopamine fix.

Porn addicts will likely have panic attacks that will lead them to have no other choice but get out, socialize, and build actual relationships with real people, persons in the flesh instead of blown-up dolls and AI characters.

Writers, visual artists, and graphic artists will be employable or in demand once again.

Homesteaders will be the biggest celebrity, as media people try to figure out how they have been able to live off the grid for so long: no Internet and energy provider, no bills, no cash, no card, no nothing. Farmlands, idle lands should be transformed into such self-sustaining modules of living.

Produce from backyard gardens in all available yards can perhaps cushion the impact of high demand vis-a-vis low supply in the market, helping stabilize prices.

Finally, with no garbage trucks running, residents will be forced to deal with their trash more creatively through recycling, upcycling, and alternative ways of disposal. Composting to turn biodegradable trash into fertilizer, and the practice of organic agriculture, will be made more viable, because... tell me, do we have much choice?

Aside from practitioners of no-carb diet and providers of solar panels, e-bikes, e-cars, hybrid cars, and rechargeable lamps or anything rechargeable, the environment will probably be the biggest winner from all that reprieve from toxic fumes and greenhouse gases, nasty substances reportedly causing global warming and/or climate change (I am confused with the terminology by now).

Like in the past pandemic, new emergency needs might bring forth new emergency businesses, industries, jobs. Over the long term, whoever can produce or manufacture local versions of inaccessible and most especially imported yet essential goods at affordable prices will probably hit a gold mine.

I don't like ending with a quote from someone I haven't actually read like Nietszche (did I spell that right?), but with all the severely limited cushioning or mitigation options we have at our disposal, may we survive this apocalyptic, dystopian, nightmarish times in our lives. And may we come back stronger, less reliant on Middle Eastern oil that has made the Arabs fabulously rich while relegating ourselves to the economic dustbin all these years. We should've been smarter than that. And if there's any credence or smidgen of verity to that old claim of the mythical Tallano gold, now is probably the best time to use it, to tide us over what looks like a great reset.

***

(AI-generated content: 0%. Note the errors I retained on purpose. So Meta, where is my reward?)