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File under #WhatsWrongWithThisPicture:
Free food distributions by churches, nonprofits etc. are becoming more common, to help remedy the food-insecurity that many people are experiencing as rent and other costs of living keep getting higher. What I consistently notice on the announcements is the instructions “Please remain in your vehicle” (as in car — I gather this is for Covid reasons).

So, what’s wrong with this picture? If you’re about to say “Well if someone can afford a car (especially a big or fancy car), they have no business taking food handouts” — No, that’s not what I’m getting at.

What I’m getting at is: Large numbers of people deal with food insecurity on an ongoing basis. And yet, most people, because of the design of the typical USA-merican life, don’t have the option to cut expenses by doing without a car. In most places it is difficult to impossible to do without a car, and that is bad design. It’s a combination of many things, including the fact that things are big and spread-out (giant homes distant from giant shops & schools & workplaces); how unfriendly most roads are to anyone not in a motor vehicle; how hostile our overall culture is to public transportation (having buses and trains and things be supported by publuc tax dollars is communist, right?).

I have heard it said that car ownership costs the typical household an average of something like $8,000 a year when you factor in insurance, repairs, gas and all.

Now, I’m not saying every household will become automatically food-secure and housing-secure if they find a way to do without the financial burden of owning a car. I’ve spent most of my adult life car-free, and yet at times in the past I’ve experienced extended periods of both food-insecurity and housing-insecurity. That said, being free of that huge 4-wheeled expense was one factor that allowed me to stay afloat and continue at my desired freelance occupations and community work. And I have been able to manage without government assistance. (Not bragging here, and also definitely not disparaging anyone who has needed government assistance. I may need it at some point — like if I need to get health insurance. Am just saying that cutting major expenses like car ownership helped me avoid needing to seek out government assistance for food, housing, etc.)

Now. Even in cases where a person/household could feasibly do without a car, there is another obstacle to living car-free. This obstacle is cultural rather than logistical. I’m talking about the fact that our culture views car ownership as a marker of success, prestige, and respectability. I would even go so far as to say our mainstream culture views car ownership as ESSENTIAL to being a “real adult” / “respectable citizen.”

If car ownership is part of how our culture defines prestige and success and respectability, then of course people are going to aspire to own cars. I have lost track of how many times I’ve heard people be all happy and excited because they just got a car. Never mind that they are having trouble keeping a roof over their head or getting enough to eat (none of which is their fault, by the way — this is structural, societal stuff).

Mainstream cultural norms are emotionally compelling and very stubbornly rooted, even among many of us who like to consider ourselves “free thinkers.” All is not lost, though: Many of the people adopting car-free lifestyles are on the wealthy and privileged side of the socioeconomic spectrum. And for better or for worse, what rich people define as “cool” and desirable tends to catch on. Of course, if we want it to catch on, there need to be plenty of walkable/cycleable/wheelchair-able neighborhoods and plenty of commute-free work options for people.

When I see those community food distribution announcements instructing people to stay in their cars, I always cringe. I have often contacted the organizers to ask if they offer alternative arrangements for people arriving on foot or other human-powered transport. And they generally say yes; that the person can just come up and get food. But it’s disturbing to me that as far as I know, I am the only person who has questioned this or brought it up. I see this as a marker of just how deeply the cultural norm of private automobile ownership has its hooks in us.

Hospitality doesn’t depend on having a fancy house or matching silverware or perfectly clean floors. Hospitality isn’t something to postpone til after you dust the furniture or get a big enough dining-table. Hospitality is simply extending your heart and receiving someone as an honored guest. Whether you live in a mansion or a trailer park or a shed or garage, or even if you don’t have a roof over your head at all, your hospitality is a unique blessing that only YOU can offer. At my tiny trailer-home in an urban RV park under the oaks in south Austin, I hosted tea-parties and cocktail soirees and late-night kaffeeklatsches and slumber-parties, and was blessed with hundreds or maybe even a thousand guests over the 10 years I lived there.

I’ve dined with millionaires and kings (well, the United Statesian version), and have stayed in the richest palaces — and yet, possibly the most heartfelt, generous hospitality I ever received was a drink of coffee in a styrofoam cup! The man who shared it with me lived on his sailboat. He had only one cup, but he offered it to me, a stranger on the beach. (This was back around 2004 in south Florida; I was on one of many trips to “find myself”.) Our conversation started casually, but it quickly left the safe shallows and plunged into the offshore depths. The leather-skinned stranger spoke of sailing over to Africa as casually as many folks talk about driving to WalMart. We sat on the edge of a pier, but I felt as though he had sat me down on a plush velvet sofa in front of a 12-foot-wide, 3D television with surround-sound, the better to treat me to the breathtaking footage of his life.

So no, don’t wait til after your house (or trailer, or garage, or car, or bench) is perfectly clean to have people over. (Psst: Re. “perfectly clean” — that’s never gonna happen.) Ask that friend or stranger you’ve been meaning to invite; don’t count too much on “someday”.)

Honestly, I think the deepest and biggest form of hospitality is simply a smile, and a listening heart.

Back in the early 2000s, I started trying to live a lifestyle such that, if everyone were living at a similar footprint, we’d have enough resources on the planet for everyone to live comfortably, rather than exceeding the earth’s carrying capacity. I hadn’t yet seen the graphics showing “how many planets” it takes to maintain the lifestyle of the typical person in each country, but I had intuitively hit on this idea and was seeking to be an example of a person living in what is by some measures the richest, most resource-hogging country of all, who is voluntarily living at a low footprint and enjoying a comfortable, indeed abundant, life. In community, in an urban setting, not “off the grid” (a bogus idea in my opinion; romantic artifact of pioneer colonizer culture and “Little House on the Prairie” reruns; ultimately no more sustainable than the mainstream middle-class USA lifestyle).

When I first started, I didn’t really have a catch phrase for what I was doing, other than “try to minimize my footprint.”

Later, a friend (thanks dear Cedar!) turned me on to the Riot for Austerity community and movement. The phrase “Riot for Austerity” comes from George Monbiot’s excellent book HEAT, which I have often referred to in this blog and in my book, talks, and classes. The Riot for Austerity group is really not about austerity at all; it’s about taking back our lives from the corporations and government, and designing our lives as examples of how a person or household can live at a tiny fraction of the average USA resident’s footprint and still live a comfortable life — indeed a happy and abundant life.

“Riot for Austerity” is a nice catchy phrase. Trouble is, the word “austerity” has a connotation of deprivation, which feeds into many people’s mainstream fears of what eco-friendly living entails. Deprivation for individuals; and recession/depression for the economy. No wonder so many people seem to find the prospect of cutting their eco footprint about as pleasant as going on a low-calorie diet.

This is a problem of perception, not reality. And as many ad copywriters know, perception can be changed quickly by using different words.

A few months back, I stumbled on the word Degrowth, when a group focused on degrowth popped into my feed. For people turned off by the word “austerity,” I offer “degrowth” as a more accurate term. Of course, this word is sure to be threatening to many people and corporations, as we’ve been indoctrinated to think that steady, perpetual economic growth is the only way to have a healthy society. It’s not. In fact, the “perpetual growth” paradigm is deadly to people and and the planet.

Yesterday someone in the De-growth group posted an article she had written: Degrowth is Not Recession. Nor is it Austerity (Erin Remblance; illuminem). This gem of an article really sums up de-growth, why we need it, and how it differs from austerity or recession. I’m posting a few snippets for you below.

BTW when I refer to “the degrowth group,” this is the group I’m referring to. “Degrowth – join the revolution,” it’s called. For me this community is a real lifeline, right up there with the Deep Adaptation group in terms of weaving a worldwide web of community and giving each other emotional support, practical tips, and reality check amid the “Don’t Look Up” consumer-colonizer insanity that our mainstream culture normalizes and glorifies.

Further Exploration:

• Degrowth is Not Recession. Nor is it Austerity (Erin Remblance; illuminem): “I often hear degrowth conflated with recession, austerity or some version thereof. The result is a mistaken belief that degrowing a wealthy economy means that people will suffer. There is, implicit in this stance, a notion that our growth-based economy is necessary to ensure we are meeting everyone’s needs. … It shows just how significantly our collective minds have been ‘capitalised’, and how our current economic framework restricts our thinking. Furthermore, the immense blind spot this perspective has to the harm capitalism has caused, and continues to cause, to indigenous peoples, people in the global south and even to a large number of people from wealthy nations is excruciating to witness. Degrowth is not recession. … Degrowth is not austerity. … Degrowth is a deliberate set of strategies to reduce the material footprint, including energy use, of wealthy nations. The concept of Degrowth applies only to those nations with lifestyles that require more than one planet and it recognises that millions of people will need to increase their material footprint if they are to live a life of dignity, providing space for them to do so while, globally, we remain within the planetary boundaries. Degrowth is a rebuke of ‘growth for growth’s sake’ … and instead it puts people and the planet firmly at the heart of the economy.” Please go read the whole article; it might be the best five minutes you spend today or even this month. She gives excellent explanations of all three terms and explains concisely how deliberate degrowth can enable everyone to live abundantly.

When I first started on my intensified low-footprint journey,* I was motivated by concern for the planet; specifically, for the survival of humans given that we seem to be on a fast self-destructive path to trashing our own life-support system.

Over time, though, I noticed I was also getting many intrinsic personal benefits from my low-footprint path. The main immediate ones were (are) time freedom and money freedom, which in turn allowed me the freedom to choose my own occupation and to engage in creative hobbies and volunteer community work.

As time went on, I realized that I had gained a measure of freedom and security for myself, but that I could never really be satisfied unless I was helping other people gain freedom and security too.

So, my eco quest became a roundabout path to trying to help as many people as possible get free of the relentless financial pressure and consumer treadmill that is so-called “modern, civilized” society.

The fact that so many of us in the wealthy industrialized nations are stuck on this treadmill is bad for the biosphere and all life forms. It is extremely bad for humans in the less-privileged nations.

But: People stuck on the treadmill don’t have the luxury of time to think for themselves and make better choices for the planet. It’s really true what I say in my book: It’s not our fault — BUT, we can do something about it. Those of us who have time to make a blog post, or even a few minutes to read and reflect on a blog post, have the power to help shift things.

In my profession, permaculture design, one of our core favorite ideas is “sharing surplus.” We aim to share our surplus time, money, skills, knowledge, and energy back into the land and into our communities.

Having surplus time, energy, or money is a privilege. But instead of beating myself up for having privilege, I can use my privilege for the good.

Being able to choose my profession is also a privilege, which I was graced with by growing up in a houseful of books, with parents who were extremely dedicated to making sure we kids had high-quality education. Even though the profession I chose has not been a high-income path, being able to have the choice is still a privilege. I used to feel guilty about this but now I just try to do what I can to help make a world in which everyone has access to books, education, economic opportunity, and various freedoms of choice. And after all, if a person who has the privilege to choose, chooses an occupation focused on restoring ecosystems and creating an equitable and sustainable society, that’s surely not a bad thing.

On the topic of using my freedom to help other people be free: A few weeks back, my horoscope from Rob Brezsny quoted several great writer/thinkers about how the ultimate purpose of freedom is to free someone else:

“‘Develop enough courage so that you can stand up for yourself and then stand up for somebody else,’ counseled poet and activist Maya Angelou. Author Toni Morrison said, ‘The function of freedom is to free someone else.’ Author and activist Nikki Giovanni wrote, ‘Everybody that loves freedom loves Harriet Tubman because she was determined not only to be free, but to make free as many people as she could.’ I hope the wisdom of these women will be among your guiding thoughts in the coming weeks. As your own power and freedom grow, you can supercharge them — render them even more potent — by using them to help others.”

*(I’ve sort of naturally just been drawn to minimal-footprint choices for my whole life without thinking about it, but about 15 years ago I became more active/deliberate/intensified about it. That story is told in my book.)

One more thing: Even if you’re not into astrology, you might really enjoy Rob’s horoscopes for your sign, and find that what he has to say resonates with you.

Further Exploration:

• One thing that has been key to my creative and occupational freedom was minimizing my housing overhead cost. A roof over our heads is the highest item in most of our budgets. Unfortunately it’s getting harder and harder for people to find low-budget housing options, as the housing ecosystem in most places has become stripped of the old standard options like SROs, boarding houses, cheap weekly hotels, and low-priced Mom & Pop RV park / mobile-home parks. I am blessed to have a house of my own since 2018, but will always continue to advocate for the re-addition of missing options to the housing menu. Some cities are starting to reintroduce/revive the old-fashioned options. One is Minneapolis. This article “Back When There Were Boardinghouses” (Southwest Journal) reports encouraging news and gives some good historic background also: “Boardinghouses and sleeping rooms are rare today, but as Minneapolis looks for more tools to battle a growing affordable housing crisis, they may become more common. Following a July request by the City Council, the city is now fleshing out the details of a plan to allow for new rooming houses, single-room occupancy units and congregate living facilities.”

• Also on the topic of housing: Back when I lived in Austin there was an SRO right downtown for $100 a week. Single-room-occupancy rooms with one shared bathroom down the hall on each floor. One of my friends, a writer and carpenter, lived there. I myself lived in an RV park where the monthly rent was only $220 when I moved in in 2000, and still only $375 a decade later when I gave up my sweet RV spot to move to Florida. The low rent in that park fueled a lot of people’s creative aspirations and enabled many of us to downsize and de-escalate from the rat race. It also just plain allowed a lot of us to survive financially despite not having high income.

• “The ‘struggle’ is not real: From tiny houses to my own lunch, poverty chic commodifies working-class life; The linguistic fetishization of hardship is one more way we appropriate from — and erase — people like my family” (Brooke Bolen; salon.com). This article makes some really important points, and I am definitely not advocating “poverty chic.” As a tangent, I’ve gotta say, the author’s homemade lunch sounds really wholesome and delicious, I have often enjoyed similar lunches, and I feel sorry for her bougie co-worker who doesn’t get it!

• “Life without Principle” (Henry David Thoreau; 1863 issue of the Atlantic — posted at atlantic.com). Yes, Mr. Thoreau was surely very privileged to have had the freedom to make the choices he made. But, the fact remains that he writes a mean paragraph! He certainly has served up some deep and liberating truths. He could have chosen not to share the thoughts that both impelled and were the fruits of his experiences — writing is a lot of work, after all! — but I’m very grateful he chose to share them! This is a long and delicious essay; here’s just one of my favorite parts: “Let us consider the way in which we spend our lives. This world is a place of business. What an infinite bustle! I am awaked almost every night by the panting of the locomotive. It interrupts my dreams. There is no sabbath. It would be glorious to see mankind at leisure for once. It is nothing but work, work, work. I cannot easily buy a blank-book to write thoughts in; they are commonly ruled for dollars and cents. An Irishman, seeing me making a minute in the fields, took it for granted that I was calculating my wages. … I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself, than this incessant business. There is a coarse and boisterous money-making fellow in the outskirts of our town, who is going to build a bank-wall under the hill along the edge of his meadow. The powers have put this into his head to keep him out of mischief, and he wishes me to spend three weeks digging there with him. The result will be that he will perhaps get some more money to hoard, and leave for his heirs to spend foolishly. If I do this, most will commend me as an industrious and hard-working man; but if I choose to devote myself to certain labors which yield more real profit, though but little money, they may be inclined to look on me as an idler.” And this: “Those slight labors which afford me a livelihood, and by which it is allowed that I am to some extent serviceable to my contemporaries, are as yet commonly a pleasure to me, and I am not often reminded that they are a necessity. So far I am successful. But I foresee, that, if my wants should be much increased, the labor required to supply them would become a drudgery. If I should sell both my forenoons and afternoons to society, as most appear to do, I am sure, that, for me, there would be nothing left worth living for.”

On Saturday February 26 from 9am to 4pm US EST, I’ll be co-teaching a workshop on how to escape from the rat-race and live life on your own terms. The rat-race (or “hamster wheel,” as we call it in the event flyer) could be financial stress, soul-sucking job, or any combination of undesirable aspects of our consumerist go-go-go society that are dragging you down and keeping you from living fully in accordance with who you really are.

I’ll be teaching along with my two good friends and fellow permaculturists Koreen Brennan (Grow Permaculture) and Laura Oldanie (Rich & Resilient Living). This practical and inspiring workshop is about forging your path to financial resilience, creative & occupational freedom, and more. There will be mini exercises and lots of time for Q&A; networking; informal chat over lunch.

The day-long workshop will be conducted by Zoom, and we’ve set the tuition at $50 to make it affordable while providing great value.

To find out more and to register, go here!
https://growpermaculture.com/event/design-your-escape/

“If cultural values are ‘off,’ the culture degrades and dies off in some way or other, sooner or later,” a friend of mine commented. (And this is true of individuals as well, at least according to my own experience with going astray from my own values that I know are sound.)

On this subject, I just read an article about how “climate anxiety therapy” has become a growing category of psychotherapy (“Climate Change Enters the Therapy Room; New York Times”).

Make no mistake, I wholeheartedly believe it’s essential for people to learn how to handle their emotions so as not to get eaten alive by them or take them out on others. Our privileged society, relatively insulated from hardships, is not good at showing people how to deal with their feelings. I’m sure this is a big part of why, despite being awash in luxuries compared with most people from around the world and throughout history, we have so much drug abuse, mental illness and gun violence — and also verbal violence.

A personal note about grief: After my Dad died, I often heard Mom apologizing for crying, and generally berating herself for not being OK. I tried to reassure her she was having a perfectly normal reaction to losing the love of her life who she’d lived with for almost 50 years. But she just kept on feeling bad for feeling bad.

So yeah, we as a society absolutely need to get better at accepting the existence of “negative” feelings, and recognizing that they are valid. And I think that anxiety and grief about ecosystems collapse and other destruction happening on the planet are healthy, appropriate feelings in response to the horrific planetary reality that is finally reaching our shores (and that people in less privileged circumstances & places have been dealing with for years). Rather than treating eco-related anxiety and grief as a “problem” for therapists to solve, I think we’d do better to really face up to how our “off” cultural values have led to the planetary conditions that are prompting people to feel grief and anxiety.

‪We should be trying to fix our society’s mindless hyper-consumerism, destructiveness, and disconnection from nature, not trying to “help” people feel better about styrofoam, plastic, heat-domes, massive die-offs of wildlife, and so on.

And definitely we should not be trying to ease people’s grief and anxiety by “reassuring” them that everything is beyond their control; that there’s nothing individuals can do. Handling our emotions in a constructive way is an essential skill, without which neither individuals nor society can be truly healthy. But. we should not be teaching people to “manage” their emotions by disconnecting from the types of pain that are a reasonable reaction to the circumstances.

How about instead, we take our grief, anxiety, rage, or what have you, and channel that energy to push harder at the food corporations that are saddling us with mountains of plastic packaging! And the gadget-makers with their planned obsolescence and constant forced upgrades.

And to push harder at our government leaders to take real action on climate, and protecting biodiversity.

And to write letters to the editors of our newspapers and magazines asking for articles about how to grow food and community, and handle hardship, and look out for our neighbors, and arrange fun local learning opportunities with our kids — instead of articles about what fancy destination we need to fly to for our lavish family vacation, or what new gadget we simply must have?

We could also, instead of (or in addition to) seeking therapy, look more to community, and to spirituality, to help us navigate grief, anxiety, horror, and other feelings, and accept that they are simply part of the human experience, and reach a sort of peace with that.

The NYT article linked above has gotten over 500 comments; you might enjoy reading them along with the article. Here are a few comments I found particularly helpful:

• “Many of us are not just consumers, we’re also stock holders. Take a look at where your money is invested. There are online sources that will evaluate your holdings for sustainability. If you don’t like what you see, vote with your dollars. Let the corporations you sell off know why you’re doing so.”

• “Lots of trolls in this comment section. Don’t let ’em get to you: it’s okay to be worried. But with the worry, find some optimism: We’ve got a lot of work to do, and things will get worse before they get better, but we can still avoid the worst. So do what you can: fly & drive less, eat less red meat, support your favorite environmental non-profit, and hound, hound, hound your representatives to pass climate legislation.”

• “A growing sense of despondency motivated me to get involved in my community to help enact climate smart policies on the local and state level. It is slow going but to actually see progress happening has helped alleviate some of my feelings of powerlessness, guilt and anxiety. The more of us who get involved and make our voices heard the better. Give it a try. You will meet likeminded people who will help carry the workload of making positive changes happen.”

• “I certainly wouldn’t want well-meaning, overworked people to feel terribly guilty about their carbon footprints, but I wish Dr. Doherty wouldn’t treat our carbon footprints as the fault of corporations alone. There are many things that people can do to lower their footprints and then feel better about themselves. The simple life can be a pleasure as both Thoreau and Stephanie Mills have pointed out. And you don’t have to work as hard to support such a life.”

• “Climate anxiety has changed the way I parent – for the better. My focus is on enjoying every day and every experience we have. I don’t feel comfortable doing some of the carbon heavy “fun things” families do – like flying to exotic destinations – but we do as much as we can locally to explore and enjoy life. I don’t care much about what college my kids get into or what career they choose. I’ve let go of that stressful, future- and achievement-oriented life. It is far too late to do anything to change what’s coming around 2050. For now, we live!”

Getting back to the opening of this post, about the importance of having sound values (and practicing them), and knowing when we are “off”: This actually leads to happiness. Real, lasting happiness.

We humans, like any other biological organism, have an innate instinct to avoid pain and maximize pleasure. It’s natural! That said, pain (be it in the form of sadness, grief, anxiety, anger, or what have you) exists for a reason. Substances, and entertainments, and finger-pointing at the “bad guys,” can temporarily ease our pain. But the ease is only temporary. Whereas when we face our pain and look for the root causes and start to address those, the relief is immense, deep, and ongoing. Which is not to say life will ever be pain-free. But when I look at all the people I know who seem truly happy, the things they have in common are that they’re engaged in some endeavor that is deeply meaningful to them and serves others; and that they are willing to face difficult feelings in themselves and others.

All of that said, I can REALLY identify with people who are experiencing eco anxiety, climate grief and so on. Sometimes I have felt utterly desolate. And many many times I’ve felt just like the woman in the article who was agonizing while grocery-shopping because some nuts she wanted to buy came packaged in layers upon stupid layers of plastic. For sure, eco anxiety, all those choices to make, often with a lack of real alternatives, constant drip-feed day in and day out, is real! So what are we going to do with the anxiety? Use it as jetpack fuel to push for deep change, would be one good answer.

In closing, I was just reminded of a favorite quote of mine. It’s from Jiddu Krishnamurti: “It is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”

Following is a short list of the main groups I read, comment on, and get support and inspiration from.

Each group has a slightly different focus. Some are more nuts and bolts tips (what to do with so many glass jars you don’t want to throw away) whereas others (like Deep Adaptation) get into deep existential questions and often bring up parallels between facing societal collapse and biospheric collapse and facing our own deaths. And the Transformative Adventures one has a focus on creativity and finding one’s right livelihood amid the dysfunctional mainstream society. Hope you find these as lifesaving as I do! Most of us can’t go it alone. There is power in numbers; these groups link tens of thousands of people around the world. Together we boost our creativity and make a difference. 

• Zero Waste, Zero Judgement Facebook group

• The Non-Consumer Advocate Facebook group

• Degrowth – join the revolution Facebook group 

• Deep Adaptation Facebook group 

• Permaculture in Action: Transformative Adventures! Facebook group