The consumer paradigm has succeeded as well as it has because it offered us all the potential to live like kings with everything we want and a life free of want and fear from starvation and hard work as well as reliance on other people. We pay for services rendered so don’t have to be nice to any worker as long as they do the work we expect them to do. I have expounded on what we need to do (e.g., see my posts from September 2018 starting with New Ways of Living Together 1 – ), 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) but let’s revisit it again. We’ve introduced the consumer mindset all over the planet as a singular way of living, and it caught on because of technology that allowed it to happen in any ecosystem and keep putting things where they really have no place to be. For instance, look at how we now build similar buildings in any ecosystem because technology insulates us from the local climates. Then look at our farming and gardening practices, in which we have introduced (and keep doing so) exotic plant species without ever thinking of the long-term effects on the local ecosystems. When we compare the new ways versus the old ways (really the very olde ways), we plant exotic shrubs and annuals instead of planting native species; we use techniques that foster erosion of topsoil instead of growing with natural mulch; we encourage monocultures that destroy biodiversity with chemicals, instead of clearing out invasive species by hand or with non-toxic solutions; and we maintain life-limiting landscapes (e.g., grass lawns) instead of creating healthy, vibrant, biodiverse polyculture systems that fit within a specific ecosystem.
In one of my earliest posts where I talk about ‘Permaculture’ (Education and Steady State? {February 2018}) I discussed how I assigned my students in a class about permaculture to design a community on a 640-acre lot that completely followed the principles of permaculture as set down by Bill Mollison in his text Intro to Permaculture. I do recall that one group went beyond that text and consulted his Permaculture: A Designers Manual as well. We can agree on scientifically developed principles that work for specific ecoclimates and regional flora, but what is rarely covered is how we deal with the range of human personalities and egos to keep it all working smoothly. Regular readers will recognize why I focus so much on this aspect.
What is important to note here is that living together requires a continuous and conscious effort from everyone that requires rules for living together. Indigenous tribes always had them as a way to deal with disruptive personalities. The ultimate penalty being expulsion, or worse for truly dangerous people. Spiritual guru, Michael Roads, once started an ecovillage that he left after three years because of endless conflict from one of the inflexible residents. In the last post I said that the Findhorn ecovillage was my choice for a model of sustainable living that works well, but that doesn’t mean it is always rosy and problem-free. For instance, in April, 2021, a disgruntled employee and community member at Findhorn, that had been laid-off (made redundant), set fire to two main community buildings, the Community Centre and the Sanctuary, that had served the community for the past 50 years. They will be rebuilt of course and the community is working with the ex-employee and still community member who is being required to work unpaid to help pay off his debt.
I know from personal experience after talking at conferences about the various modes for living sustainably, how some people would come up after my talks, rigidly adamant that their way of living was the only ‘right’ way to do it. I’m sorry but there is no one ‘right’ way and no set of bulleted procedures to follow. You begin with the physical principles for sustainability and then living together becomes an organic set of experiences of figuring out how to live together well. Living sustainably does not automatically mean living in a utopia. People are people, and being aware and accepting of differences is crucial to avoiding conflict, and leadership that could become dogmatic and inflexible (totalitarian), or even cult-like. Open dialogue and a willingness to think and talk outside the personal box are requirements for success. In our global consumer societies, we rely on police, the legal systems, and now highly flawed political systems to control our worst impulses. To live sustainably we need to change ourselves not just our technology. Why is this kind of change important now? Because our governments are legislating against us – prohibiting free choice or mandating new procedures and life-choices that favor corporations and control.
We have become so used to being disconnected we no longer remember what it was once like to live as a true community. That was before the industrial revolution when we stopped being communities and instead bought into the work week revolution fostered by well-meaning people like Robert Owen (a utopian socialist who tried to create a perfect society in which poverty and unemployment was eliminated by the eight-hour day in a factory). I suspect that he believed that the factory would become a community in its own right, but the economic realities forging profit over people probably worked against him – he wanted utopia within the existing culture. Much as we might want to tweak the existing system to be better, we have to think outside the box and even break the box apart so creativity can thrive in a more open environment.
What made tribal cultures work? I think they had honor and respect for each other, and a spiritual reverence for all life. Of course, they had boundaries and they certainly weren’t saints as ‘new agers’ like to believe, but they did have a way to live well with each other. The Victorians were certainly overly polite within society but that was all superficial and rarely deeply rooted in any respect – indeed they thrived on gossip and vicious social chastisement for any who broke any social correctness rules.
Today we seem to have lost politeness and respect and have become obsessed again with social correctness. Virtue shaming (especially the last two years) has created a tendency to be cruelly opinionated with no regard for others perspectives. Personal sovereignty is important, but being honoring people and being respectful is required if we are to successfully live together. As organizational psychologist Adam Grant says, “’I’m just being honest’ is a poor excuse for being rude. Candor is being forthcoming in what you say. Respect is being considerate in how you say it. Being direct with the content of your feedback doesn’t prevent you from being thoughtful about the best way to deliver it.”
It doesn’t help that because of the lockdowns so many people feel a sense of languish and hopelessness for the future. It was already there the past many decades as we became more and more entrenched in an individualist consumer society. We need to jumpstart ourselves into interconnected supportive communities, not individuals living within bubbles of fabricated illusions of wealth. A lot of what we need I covered initially in earlier posts, New Ways Of Living Together 1 , 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) {September 2018}). But let me reflect more on what got us to this sorry state. In the next post.
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