Author: jennynazak

One task of a grassroots reduction movement is to help people get past the “never-enough” mentality that is baked into our culture. The quickest way to do this is to strengthen people (including ourselves) from within, so we feel truly secure. Then we don’t feel compelled to use excess material stuff to suppress our feelings; fill a hole that’s existential or spiritual.

One of my favorite mystical/spiritual writers is Rumi. Here’s a quote from him I just stumbled on:

“This being human is a guest house. Every morning is a new arrival. A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor…Welcome and entertain them all. Treat each guest honorably. The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them at the door laughing, and invite them in. Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.” — Rumi

Go here for other mystical quotes from Rumi: 22 Mystical Quotes by Rumi, via adamsiddiq.com

Insightful article on evolving our collective consciousness; moving beyond the “unfillable hole of never-enough” that characterizes our culture:

“As part of their map to the coming decade, The Institute for the Future has laid out four post-pandemic scenarios for the United States, with echoes and implications globally. They range from a collapse scenario they term ‘Ungoverning,’ characterized by a civil war between ‘blue masks and red hats’ to a transformation scenario they call ‘Social Solidarity,’ characterized by a sharing economy and well-being as a basic human right. In between is a growth scenario that shores up existing capitalistic systems and a constraint scenario with Orwellian levels of health monitoring and contact tracing. What these scenarios highlight are the high stakes of the transition we are living and leading through. They share in common a set of forces most assuredly shaping the decade to come: economic and racial inequality, political and social division, broken healthcare systems, technology supplanting human workers, all set upon a planet in a climate emergency. Where they differ is in whether we face into these wicked issues by evolving our consciousness, regressing in consciousness, or muddling through without much change in consciousness. … The sign of great leadership is that it advances consciousness, it pulls people up. Practices that evolve our consciousness, that can grapple with paradox and borrow from permaculture can help us create a future of work that is a future we want.” (From “Enough: How Practices, Paradox And Permaculture Can Create A Future Of Work That Works,” by Ginny Whitelaw in Forbes magazine online, February 9, 2021.)

If it seems like I do a lot of posts about the mind, you’re right! Ultimately, navigating life is a mind-gig, and the path of sustainability is no exception.

Often I’ve written about the importance of learning to surrender; let go of attachments to certain outcomes, certain viewpoints. This isn’t the same as not caring about an outcome, or not having a viewpoint; it’s just a willingness to open up to the possibility that yes, I can go on living even if my preferred outcome gets “outvoted,” so to speak.

Sometimes, the word we use can affect how we feel about something. Like, for me, sometimes “surrender” feels a little too passive; a little too much like “giving up.”

I feel the same way about the word “non-attachment,” as in “cultivating non-attachment.” It has sort of a numb feel to me, like some “spiritual” people I’ve met who seem so nonattached that they hold everything at an abstract distance, even their own feelings. Our feelings are part of our moral compass; we need access to them.

And yet I know from experience that surrender, cultivating non-attachment, whatever phrase you prefer to call it by, is an extremely healthful and helpful practice, not only for increasing one’s peace of mind but also for accomplishing one’s mission of good works in the world.

A new article from DailyOM–one of my favorite blogs about managing our inner landscape (or “Zone Zero-Zero” as we call it in permaculture)–uses a phrase I really like: “developing a flexible mind.” This is really what surrender and nonattachment boil down to: expanding our minds; becoming more flexible and supple as opposed to rigid and brittle.

Same concept; different feel. Use whichever word(s) or description(s) work for you, but I cannot overstate how powerful this practice is.

Further Reading:

• Mind Stretching (DailyOM.com): “Having a flexible mind makes navigating life much easier, as you are not thrown off course easily. Flexibility is the capacity to bend without breaking, as well as a continual willingness to change or be changed in order to accommodate new circumstances. People with flexible minds are open to shifting their course when necessary or useful; they are not overly attached to things going the way they had planned. This enables them to take advantage of opportunities that a more rigid person would miss out on. It can also make life a lot more fun. When we are flexible, we allow for situations we could not have planned, and so the world continues to surprise and delight us.” Go read the rest; it’s a goodie. Enjoy!

• “Adopting another way of looking at things is a simple act that can have magical consequences.” — Harry Palmer, in his book The Avatar Path: The Way We Came. (Harry is the author of The Avatar Course materials and several books. The ability to deliberately change viewpoints is one of the skills I got to learn and practice by reading Harry’s books and taking the course.)

We can never hear too many “pandemic pivot” stories. Pivots in response to major challenges often end up improving the foundational structure of an enterprise (or a household, or a community, or all three).

Here’s a recent one: A restaurateur’s “Pandemic Pivot” has ended up boosting local food resilience! (And helping his employees and other locals through hard economic times as well.) Win-win-win!

“Before the end of the year, the restaurant changed its name to Scratch & Co. and launched a retail brand, Scratch & Co. Made Brand. The goal is to cut through the global supply chain and offer locally sourced provisions such as pickles, lunch meat and sauerkraut while ensuring local farmers and commercial ecosystems have an advantage over global and national supply chains.

“‘If I hadn’t been taking that approach I’d be talking to you as a former business owner,’ Mahaney said. “The only reason we’re still in business now is because we changed our entire business model.”

David at Raptitude, who writes excellent posts to help us all “navigate the strange experience of being human,” has done a public service by making a post that’s a catalogue of his 65 most helpful posts.

David, one of my perennial favorite bloggers, has divided the 65 posts into categories: on becoming calmer and wiser; on getting yourself to do things; on dealing with hard times; on staying sane in modern society; on cultivating gratitude; and many more topics. What an excellent resource; I’ve got it bookmarked and hope you find it useful too.

I never get tired of reading and studying about the topic of mastering one’s own mind. Learning to manage my own mind, and help others learn to do so, has been a lifelong endeavor for me. A burning quest and a constant passion. (So much so that after taking a truly life-changing 9-day experiential course to learn this skill, I went on to become an instructor of the course.)

The mind is ground zero. Everything ripples out from there. Navigating through life is, fundamentally, a task of navigating consciousness. The quickest way to get better at managing life, and be happy and at peace, is learn how to operate your own mind.

My adopted hometown, Daytona Beach, has just been named “One of the Top 10 Most Affordable Beach Towns in the USA.”

A neighbor and fellow activist posted this news item on a local forum, together with her comment, “Not exactly proud of this. And it belies the need for affordable housing. What comes with this ‘accolade’ is a host of problems that we ignore. A rush to the bottom isn’t a good thing in my opinion.”

My city has long had this “affordable beach town” reputation. This idea, and various issues connected with it, have therefore been on my mind for a long time.

“Paradise” comes with responsibilities. Not enough people seem to know that.

And specifically I mean:

1) Responsibilities to the local environment/ecosystem — the land, the water, the air — and all plant and animal species who inhabit it.

2) Responsibilities to the full human ecosystem, including residents of all income levels, occupations, & life-circumstances.

Along with its reputation as a low-cost paradise, our area also has an image (shamelessly fostered by tourist bureaus) for no-strings-attached hedonistic pleasure, as expressed in PR phrases like “The Fun Coast” and “Wide Open Fun.” This mindset is so normalized that it even took me (a person who notices and questions such things) a while to notice and question it. We take entire places and effectively, with this attitude, turn them into unreal, cartoonish non-places. “Conscience-free zones.” It’s obscene, actually. A profanation of place.

No one should get to arrive here and just enjoy the sunshine and swimming, but not care about the people and other creatures who already live here. No one should get to arrive here, then actively set about making life harder for, or even trying to eradicate, the people and other creatures who already live here.

No one should get to come here (whether to visit or to live) and feel like they “shouldn’t have to see homeless people.” No one should get to move here — buy a piece of paradise with their out-of-state-rich money — and then speak out loudly against affordable-apartment developments; expanded shelter options.

No one should get to move here and scalp the forest and wetland vegetation, evict all the wild creatures with the flick of a backhoe, and replace that richness with a graded-and-filled “green desert”: mile upon mile of treeless buzzcut chemical-carpet interspersed with blobs of dyed orange mulch.

No one should get to come here and expect to never again have to think or deal with any discomfort “because we worked hard all our lives.”

Paradise comes with responsibilities.

This is true not just for my city and other beach towns, but also for mountain towns, desert towns, and any other place where people move to “find paradise.” It’s true for your place as well as mine.

Even if your place isn’t widely considered a paradise, it’s true of your place too. No one should get to move to your part of the world and take over it. Gentrify and sanitize it socially, economically, horticulturally, biologically, ecologically. The way we “modern” Anglo-Euro humans have been doing for centuries, everywhere.

What gets called “modern” is actually gross, brutish, and primitive.

Colonize, that’s the word. We have built a consumerist, colonizer culture, and our task is to make a turnaround before it’s too late for us.

Paradise comes with responsibilities. It occurred to me just now that this applies not just to places, but to the entire planet; to Earth itself. As citizens of this magnificent blue-and-green sphere among the stars, we live in paradise. And paradise comes with responsibilities.

Furthermore, it just occurred to me that this concept of paradise-responsibility applies not only to the entire planet, but across time as well. As inhabitants of the present time, we live in paradise. Information technology gives us unprecedented access to all the wisdom of all people all over the world, and throughout history. Living in this temporal paradise comes with responsibilities.

We owe it to our ancestors not to squander the fruits we’ve inherited, which come from their hard work and sacrifice.

And we owe it to our descendants, to all future generations, to leave them a healthy planet. To not kick our consequences into the future; not pass the buck; not saddle them with the reeking garbage-bags of our selfishness.

Further Exploration:

• On the subject of responsibility to the future, a wise and lovely friend (thanks, Reverend Kathy!) recently turned me on to an amazing TED Talk: How To Be A Good Ancestor. The speaker, Roman Krznaric, talks about how we modern consumerist humans are literally “colonizing the future” with our destructive habits, and how we can stop that. He proposes the concept of going against the harmful norm by becoming “time-rebels.”

• “They Want To Start Paying Mother Nature for All Her Hard Work.” (By Catrin Einhorn, NYTimes.com). “Continuing to ignore the value of nature in our global economy threatens humanity itself, according to an independent report on biodiversity and economics, commissioned by the British government … ‘Even while we have enjoyed the fruits of economic growth, the demand we have made on nature’s goods and services has for some decades exceeded her ability to supply them on a sustainable basis,’ Dr. Dasgupta said. ‘The gap has been increasing, threatening our descendants’ lives.'”

In this blog, and in my book, I give tips on how to cut your eco-footprint to 10 percent of the US average. That’s the level of carbon reduction specified by George Monbiot in his book HEAT: How To Stop the Planet from Burning.

That book sparked the grassroots lifestyle movement known as the Riot for Austerity (AKA 90 Percent Reduction Challenge), which I often refer to in this blog and in my book. (This movement was actually the inspiration for my book, and later, this blog.)

Although 10 percent is the level deemed by climate activist and journalist Monbiot as essential to even open up the possibility that human life will survive on this planet, I’m a firm believer in the idea that everyone has to start somewhere. And I think that if everyone were cutting their footprint by even 10 or 20 percent, we’d see radical changes in market demand, and therefore in planetary ecosystems. Look at the improvements we’ve seen in air and water quality, and wildlife sightings near human settlements, since the Covid pandemic significantly curtailed manufacturing and transportation demand. This happened without most people even trying to reduce their footprint in other areas — and there are many other areas besides transportation and manufacturing where we can make a difference via our everyday choices.

On that note, I want to offer you some quick tips for making major reductions in your footprint. By undertaking these to the extent that you are willing/able, I estimate that you can quickly reduce your footprint to 50 percent of the US average, or even 20 percent. That last few percent down to 10 can be a little trickier, but here are the big fruit.

ELECTRICITY: 1) Minimize use of forced-air heat in your home. (Obviously easier in warmer climates, but even people living in colder climates can make significant reductions. Heat with deadwood if that’s an option. And portable electric radiators are an energy-efficient way to heat just your immediate surroundings.) Learn to live without air conditioning. 2) Wash your clothes in cold water, and line-dry them. 3) Turn off your water heater, or turn it on only during the time window you are using it to take showers; switch it off the rest of the day. Use hot water only for showers, and keep your showers short.

HOME OIL/GAS: Tips for big reductions are the same as for reducing electricity.

GASOLINE: Cut short-distance car trips. A disproportionately large share of car trips are less than 5 miles (more than 35 percent of motor vehicle trips are under 2 miles), and those short trips consume proportionately more fuel than long-haul trips. Live near where you work and shop. You can take a few long-distance trips a year and still keep your transportation footprint at around 20 to 50 percent of the US average. Avoid traveling by air. If you have to fly, purchase carbon offsets.

WATER: Use no automated irrigation outdoors. Replace lawn with native & waterwise plants. Water your food garden with a hose or watering can, and use the minimum needed. Use water only for bathing, cooking, drinking, toilet-flushing. “If it’s mellow, let it yellow” can save you many gallons of toilet flush water a day.

WASTE/TRASH: Biggest reduction in household trash volume and weight comes from composting your food scraps instead of throwing them away. Also, minimize purchase of packaged foods and other items in plastic packaging.

FOOD: Grow some of your own food if you can. Whatever you can’t grow, buy as much as possible from local farmers. Avoid buying “faraway food” (fruit from thousands of miles away, etc.); eat what’s in season where you are. Reduce meat and dairy intake.

CONSUMER GOODS: Ask yourself if you really want or need the item. Repair rather than buy new if possible. Buy used rather than new. (Lots of people are doing this already, for economic reasons as well as footprint.)

These tips will allow you to radically cut your footprint in a hurry. Even if you can only do some of them, don’t be discouraged. Most of us have trouble making cuts in one category or another.

For lots of tips, from people all over the world, about reducing consumption and waste (and therefore cutting your carbon footprint) in every area of daily life, I recommend the Facebook group Zero Waste, Zero Judgment.

Also, you might enjoy reading my book DEEP GREEN. (Available in print, as a PDF, or free right here online on this blog.)