I’ve been told that I had a lot of typos on my last post – and that I have occasional typos on most posts. My apologies. Grammar check on my system it seems is misbehaving. Usually, I read through to copyedit my posts, but it’s hard to do on the same day. I have been somewhat occupied so recently I have written that week’s blog the same day I posted. When you write you tend to see what you thought you wrote, and it is only after some interval that you see the real text. That is a good metaphor for how we view life. We see what we except to see and only on reflection (if we bother to do it) do we see how our reality has been manipulated.
Modern living in the developed world is about comforts and luxuries and being able to simply expect someone ‘hired’ to do whatever work needs dong – the commodified consumer-materialism system. We are so specialized that we all have our little jobs to pay the bills and expect everyone else to just do their little bit, as part of the system. On a local food system website, I saw this line, “No, our gardens won’t fix it all. But they remind us where food comes from, reconnect us with nature, and create spaces where community can take root. And in a world out of balance, that matters deeply.” And, “Community gardens aren’t easy – that’s no secret. But they bring people together, build trust, and grow something far greater than the food. In a world full of discouraging headlines, isn’t that exactly the kind of effort needed?” The difference between a material-consumer world and a post-material sustainable one is that we will all become more generalists than just specialists.
Modern living has made us complacent and all too ready to sit back and expect commodified services take care of everything. That has us trapped! We are now caught up in AI driven systems that are faceless and lack compassion, simply because there is almost no humanity expressed anymore. Sustainable Living is about bringing humanity back to daily living. Bringing people back together and reconnecting with the natural world. I was talking at a conference and one of the audience stood up during the Q & A to express their opinion that if everyone just got out into nature we would all come to love the natural world. I responded, rather cynically, that if that were only so, then every skier on the winter slopes must love nature. Some might, but to most, the slopes are just where they enjoy their skiing sport – it’s not necessarily about nature itself.
OK, so where I am I going with this. The natural system works collaboratively as one complete system. The human-built world works as large sets of smaller devised interacting systems that pretend they are separate from each other. A consequence of this is that most people in the developed world tend to think ‘separateness’ is a normal thing. Note I make a point of saying the developed world. In the developing world, they are all too aware of how they are connected to the each other and the natural world, as the commodified systems we enjoy, fail miserable for them or do not exist at all.
I have written at length about the first four items we need to address to begin Living Sustainably in a modern technological world. To reiterate: Item number one: Mindfulness. We must start being mindful and conscious of every thought and action. A question to ask yourself every day,” What will the world look like when we are all enlightened, and practice mindfulness.” Item number two: New Economics. Since the 1980s, the world has been caught in a whirlwind of economic transformation called ‘Globalization.’ While it has had many benefits, one major consequence has been the erosion of local economic systems, knowledge, and supply chains (e.g., The Walmart Effect). Item number three: New Metrics: Redefine what success means for your community. Item number four: Food resiliency. This is important since true resilience means creative thinking about how communities regenerate themselves for self-sufficiency. Now, Item number five: Energy resiliency. Our lives revolve around technology that uses energy, and we need to control it at the local level to be resilient in times of energy shocks.
As I ranted in my last post, the industrial revolution was a major technological leap forward that enabled humanity, within a mere couple of centuries, to bring us to the technological marvels we enjoy today. But that technological advancement came at a high cost, however, both human through the abject squalor of working conditions for most of the two centuries, and also the ecological carnage imposed on the natural world. It is only in the developed nations (about 20% of the world’s population) that in the last 80 years, the general people could enjoy the luxuries and comforts enjoyed primarily before then by the hierarchical masters. And besides the economic systems set up to drive the global human systems, we must never lose track of what it was that allowed all this to happen – energy – fossil fuels (and later nuclear power).
Now, here is the crucial aspect I need everyone to understand. Our modern world was created because we found high dense compact energy that could be moved around – fossil fuels. Before these fossil fuels systems were introduced, a roman engineer could easily recognize technology up to the 1850s (and possibly even as far as the 1920s, if they were smart). What and how we have developed technologically in the last century is unprecedented and would be like magic to anyone before that time. Yet, until we get the kind of endless and abundant quantum energy that Nikola Tesla recognized (and also many geniuses since) into the global markets, we are restricted by our current energy systems. Let me be blunt here. Moving into the future on the assumption that there will be endless energy is a recipe for the apocalypse. We have this incredible illusion that our current energy systems are robust and endless; yet, that system is driven by the insane logic of our economic paradigms, which predicated on scarcity, still act as though energy and resources are endless!!!
We do have an abundance of energy and resources to meet everyone’s needs (yes all 8 billion+ of us) but not with the mindset we use at this time. We can argue about the actual ‘peaks’ of fossil fuels and uranium resources as sources for energy generation, but the simple fact that we are using them exponentially (see Al Bartlett link for more detail) as more of us use them globally and new resource discoveries are getting less frequent. We have started to become more efficient in extraction and usage, but the simple fact is we cannot continue to ignore the reality that fuel resources are limited and there seem to be no plans for what happens when they become restrictively limiting! And I’m sorry to burst any belief bubbles here, current renewable energy sources are but a stop gap giving us a few more years. And it isn’t just the energy sources, but how the first four items link to our energy sources. While I put energy as item five, all five items are crucial and interdependent on each other for a way to achieve a technological and sustainable way of living.
Most people in the developed world enjoy the freedom of being able to jump into a car, and drive to a destination; but, especially if they live in a dense urban environment, then have to hunt for somewhere to park. Maybe the parking is varied at different times of the day, but it can be a hassle. Public transport is so varied as well. Some cities have great metro systems. Others, it can be unreliable, and that flavors any enthusiasm to use it everywhere. Yet, that is what we need. Reliable, safe, and clean public transport. And when it is dependable in getting us to where we want to go, it gains a convenience that outweighs the restrictions for which many currently shun it. Why public transport? Because the most wasteful thing we can do with fossil fuels, especially oil, is burn it!
It’s a bit like talking with someone who complains that their feet hurt and want a solution to the pain. When you look down at their feet you notice they have hammered 3-inch nails into them. When you point out this strange behavior as a cause of the pain, they look at you incredulously, saying, “But this is the way we live.” Modern consumer-materialism living is like that. We are hurting ourselves and the planet and know why, but cannot seem to fathom that the simple solutions to our problems are to live differently – sustainably!! Think about your energy behaviors. How might you do them differently to effect the changes in your area that make sense for a sustainable solution? Then think up all the excuses (and assumptions) about why these kinds of changes are not there – yet.
Paraphrasing spiritual teacher Ram Dass, “whether this is the first day of the apocalypse or the first day of the Golden Age, the work is the same…to love each other and ease as much suffering as possible.”
To Be Continued ……………
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