So as I just registered, I will introduce myself. I have not read all the recommended reading in your agreement, but I am quite confident I will have no problem accepting them. Materials I am through with is the Novels of Daniel Quinn, some books by Robert Wolff, some reading by Stephan Harding a couple of interviews and talks with Quinn, Zerzan and Derrik Jensen as well as some people I do not remember the names. I watched a couple of documentaries like Gasland, Food Inc, Home and “What a way to go”. Basically I found that some of it was utterly boring as I just read what I already concluded or voiced in debates before but I found them to be good as all this showed me that I am not alone.
My personal development goes back 20 years when I started to read Jean Auels books as a teenage girl, at that time I was also impressed with movies and documentaries (Emerald Forest and public television shows on aboriginal people in the amazon or Africa). I dreamt on growing up and live that way in some remote area. I discovered some traits of animism in me on a year in the Colorado, US - a place that has a lot of nature and allows people to fish without spending thousands on licenses. Later I briefly planned to buy a farm to make a self sustaining living there with a friend, but we never got past reading a book on that and looking at some property ads before we seperated. I took a lot of interest in handycrafts skills and pre-industrial ways, later joined a medieval archery reenactment group (practicing some crafts like bowmaking, fletchery, sewing, working with leather, woodworking) as a retreat from modern civilization a bit and picked up on steampunk as a reflection on industrialization. By doing all that I met a couple of good people who think alike in many aspects and we talked through some of the “doom and gloom” aspects. Embarrassingly an increase in my motivation to finally puzzle it all together came when another Hollywood movie came out last year (Avatar) and I met a lot of people who think alike or the opposite by posting in a fan forum there. I had interesting debates there that also led me to be more open about what my reasoning on this whole subject is. The past year or year-and-a-half since I started a new job and moved out of the city also lead to the revival of the wish to form a self sustaining community again and signed up for courses on permaculture and will take part in the guardians of the earth meeting to learn more skills - this is where I am at now - trying to find some way to get out of this mess for myself and hopefully help others to do the same. I also have the wish to somehow “do good” on a bigger scale, but am unsure on how to do that - I am not even sure how to manage to help myself. I am a member of a small online group of people who have been thinking of this very seriously for some months now and I have some real life friends who at least share many of my thoughts but have different approaches on actions than I do - Overall so much is open and “hanging in midair” that I sometimes get frustrated. I still need to work some things out, get a clear picture on what is going on and what can be done, so if at times I ask stupid questions or take positions that are not “enlightened”, forgive me - I am still not finished with the puzzle (I describe it as a puzzle - many pieces of information on how I see the world are scattered in my life and I also found some in the websites and books and videos I took in. For about a year now I have puzzled them together and I see an image emerging, but the details are missong and I sometimes still have to cope with what I see emerging, as I discover to my surprise that some of my superficial beliefs turn out to be utterly wrong)
Oddly enough I studied earth science to master level, so in a way I am very much part of science and technology but I think these studies also led to many reasonings and conclusions. I think I can make good educated guesses and the fact that I concluded a whole number of arguments myself from the knowledge I gained in that studies and that these conclusions strikingly match these of others who drew them indipendently gives them a lot of credibility that I would not have given them if I just got all these ideas by reading books.
Oh and I also sometimes tend to write long posts 
forgive me for that, too.
Is there something here like a newbie subforum to get started?
Greetings
Aurora
forgive me for that, too.