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Big discussion over in the DA group about flying; privilege. Inevitably a few people in these circles still feel that they must fly across oceans to go see their faraway family members. This is an example of a huge dilemma that our fossil-fueled society has enabled. In the olden days it would not have been an option. If you moved far away from family you knew you might never see them again. Only about 5% of the world’s population has ever set foot on a plane.

This is just a huge topic that often comes out in the world of voluntary Degrowth, Deep Adaptation and so on.

I responded to somebody who asked me if I had given up my car, and who said that frequent flying by the rich is the big problem.

Thanks for explaining what you meant. I don’t necessarily agree, I do think things need to change, but I get what you’re saying.

And of course I understand your wanting to see your brother. Probably if I were in your shoes I would constantly be asking him to please move near the rest of the family.

And I also do understand what it’s like to be that one family member who lives far from their family. I really love the place where I live, love my community here — even though I miss my family. As the person who chose to make their life in a different place, I have to make a lot of extra effort to maintain our relationships.

I do agree w you re. frequent flying. And fancy travel & other extreme consumerism by the very rich.

But in my country, the USA, the “middle class” is jetsetty and consumerist on a robber-baron level. Especially my fellow white Boomers. And since our numbers are very large (both middle-class and Boomers), every choice we make has an even greater impact collectively.

Since I am a citizen of the USA, I consider it my job to try to help reset the norms in my country, since my country is consuming 25% of the world’s resources with 5% of the world’s population.

i don’t have a car. I find automobile ownership an unacceptable burden for myself and for the planet. But I do understand that it can be very very difficult for people to get around without private cars in today’s perversely designed world.

I get around mainly by foot and bicycle. No it’s not always easy, but I enjoy it plus I feel like it’s important to try and set an example. (My occupation is sustainability educator, self-employed.) And I am an activist pushing for a better public transportation and more pedestrian and bicycle-friendly streets.

I do all the stuff you mentioned and I’m constantly finding ways to do more. It’s actually enjoyable and life-enriching. And since joining this group and similar groups, at least I know I have plenty of company.

*******

Excerpts from a couple other comments on this DA post that resonated with me:

“Most people I know are poor and have never even driven a car. I’m surrounded by activists from marginalized communities, they also make up most people in the world actually. It’s almost like these people you mention should be called aliens or something. Most people don’t fly, I think 3 percent of the world population can afford to fly.”

And

“Yep, for those who fly, stopping is often the biggest thing they can do.

“Another big one is to earn less income.

“Because environmental damage can’t be decoupled from GDP, the more money a person earns the greater the damage. Even if it is spent on ‘good’ stuff like home insulation, we have no control over how that money is spent after it leaves our hands and gets spent multiple times again.

“For those struggling to pay for the basics, the biggest action they can do is learn about Degrowth and spread the message.”

(Shared with my neighborhood watch group today. Posting this here in case it’s useful for anyone else.)

Beachside Redevelopment Board meeting tonight!

Hey Neighbors!

Beachside Redevelopment Board meeting 6pm tonight! At City Hall, in the City Commission Chambers. (Upstairs. BTW there is a very nice water fountain water bottle refill station downstairs by the restrooms. Fill your bottle or cup with nice chilled water and come on up.)

(BRB always meets at 6pm on the second Wednesday of the month unless it is canceled.)

Tonight among other things on the agenda it looks like we will be getting a report and Q&A with our wonderful City Manager, Mr. Deric Feacher!

BTW, several of us go to this and other local government meetings routinely. It’s a great way to have input and to meet like-minded community members who are working to make a positive difference.  Plus, for some of us it’s a big part of our social life ha ha. 

Politically, I am a flaming anarchist. If I can endure government-type meetings, so can you. <laugh emoji x 2> Also, sometimes some of us go out for drinks and food afterwards. <happy smile emoji>

Attending this & other board meetings (as well as the city commission meetings, developer-initiated meetings etc.) whenever we can is a great way to not have undesirable development sneak up on us. But it’s also a great way to start really expressing what we WANT, as opposed to just what we don’t want.

I tend to talk a lot about walkability, having basic services in close distance of our homes. Our historic core neighborhoods used to be walkable/bikeable, not so car-dependent, and can be again. 

And I talk a lot about the need for the City to practice beach-friendly landscaping: respecting our natural dune environment; protecting what is left of the oaks and other tree canopy remaining on our little island.

All citizens get a chance to comment at the board meetings, and you can comment on whatever you care about regarding the beachside. 

Creating a beautiful livable beachside that serves the needs of residents of all ages and needs, while being welcoming to our many visitors, is a big task but it is doable. If you are like me, you want to be able to grow old here. The price of us having a truly livable place is being willing to give proactive feedback, rather than us just reacting when threatened with something we don’t like.

Hope to see lots of you there tonight! 

https://www.codb.us/ArchiveCenter/ViewFile/Item/6819

Beachside redevelopment board meeting
6pm 2nd Wed of the month unless canceled.

Location City Commission chambers, City Hall, 301 S. Ridgewood. Intersection of Orange Avenue & Ridgewood.

A permie friend asked:

“I often am torn between the beauty of art and music, and then pondering how that energy could have been applied to figuring out how to grow food and live sustainably, helping to restore and revitalize ecosystems so that our descendants have a planet where they CAN do art and music?”

My take:

(TL; DR: Meditation and comfort, transcendence and taking joy in beauty, are arguably functions that are essential for human life. We are more than just biological organisms.)

For the entire history of humankind, even societies that seem to live hand to mouth have always had art. I think we need the arts (including music) to make life worth living.

Not only do I think we can have both; I am pretty sure it’s mandatory.

When I was a bit younger, I used to beat myself up. I thought of myself as frivolous for being called to art and humanities. I reproached myself for not having the skill or discipline to study hard science and know how to do plumbing and build bridges and stuff. But then the insight of a couple paragraphs up suddenly occurred to me. About how even the most hand-to-mouth societies have always had art and music in some form. Hmmm, I thought, So maybe the arts aren’t so frivolous after all!

I think it’s possible that USA American colonizer society is the only society in human history that has ever tried to treat music and the arts, and beauty in general, as optional. I think the results speak for themselves. The most materially wealthy society in history is desperately poor in all the ways that matter.

If the arts and music didn’t exist, I couldn’t get motivated to get out of bed in the morning, let alone lift a fork to my mouth, let alone scrabble in the soil to grow the stuff that goes on the fork.

This brings to mind a quote attributed to Winston Churchill. When someone said we have to cut the arts for the defense budget, he supposedly said something along the lines of, “Well if we cut the arts, what are we fighting for?”

I would say the same concept applies to the permie obsession with growing food. Which of course is necessary, but all too often with us white permies seems to come at the expense of all else, including building community, living near our loved ones, and working for the upliftment of all fellow humans and other fellow creatures. The extreme obsessive focus on physical food-growing feels like a big cognitive drain.

Divide and conquer! Except in this case, it’s us voluntarily dividing ourselves, by willingly going out into BFE with just one or two other people, and grubbing potatoes or whatever. When all over the world and throughout history, people have done that collectively in community.

If all we do is grow food in our own backyards or some remote acreage, what the heck are we growing food for? Just for our own biological survival? This is not what permaculture is about. And it certainly won’t make a sustainable society. It feels to me like a voluntary descent into hardscrabble times.

I might even go far to say that a society that devotes all its resources to practicality at the expense of beauty — a society that treats beauty as optional — is ultimately a society that is … impractical!! Which is definitely unsustainable.

<insert image of American Gothic painting, that iconic painting of the dour-faced farm couple (by Grant Wood; 1930>

PS. Art and music lift us to other realms. Remind us that other realms exist. As another commenter put it, art and music “help us realize the palpable aspects of other dimensions.” I think that might be why some super strict religions are against music and art, at least music and art that are not directly religious. Because it poses a threat to authoritarianism by allowing us to travel to other dimensions in our minds.

PPS. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Artists — including poets, novelists etc. — serve as a BS detector and moral compass for society. It’s surprisingly easy for a cloister of linear, factual, literal-minded people to go off the rails very quickly and lose their BS detectors. I have seen it firsthand with some of the sharpest science-brainy people I know. I have lost count of the times when I’ve been like, “Holy cannoli!! How does this person who’s so science-sharp and so much fact-smarter than me not see that the guy talking right now is obviously ‘off’ even though the sentences he’s putting together have internal validity and make grammatical sense?” In this sense the arts serve a physical, biological survival function for society too.

(This post grew out of my response to someone in the Deep Adaptation group who posted that they have basically given up family proximity for land. It’s a common thing in capitalist culture for people to think they need a bunch of land, and lots of people in the collapse-aware circles have gone to drastic extremes, moving away from strong community and close-by jobs to secure “ownership” of large pieces of land. This mother feels like she has to sacrifice the present to secure her children’s future.)

7 acres sounds really daunting and lonely, especially if it’s only going to be you guys having to do all the work. 3 acres sounds a little less daunting.

And the “eye-watering mortgage,” I’m so sorry. <broken-heart emoticon>

I sometimes feel that places like that are really unsafe compared with the safety of the people we love, and also of neighbors who can share the load. Also, loneliness and isolation are way underestimated as a factor in failure to thrive.

Have you met any of the neighbors? Do they have kids? Will you be homeschooling /unschooling? (Actually although I’m a city dweller, if I had kids right now I would totally want them to be unschooled, with various elements such as neighborhood service projects, working at family business, and online courses.)

I always worry when people who have not grown up in rural areas suddenly move out to rural acreage. Feels like having no other contact or minimal other contact with other people.

But, I recognize that people have different levels of wish for community / social interaction. I’m actually an introvert and yet I could never thrive in a suburban or rural area. I would actually feel more scared and vulnerable. Plus the sheer amount of work, And having to reinvent the wheel, such as teaching yourself how to grow everything, and failing by trial and error when people have been growing food, fiber, fodder, and fuel in community for thousands of years.

Well, I do know that people find a way. And I wish you and your family much joy, abundance, and beauty in your daily lives. It could be that you will find some elders and other community in your new place.

I do feel like our hyperindividualistic western industrialized culture underestimates the importance of community in resilience. And we seem to have maybe some ancestral programming regarding the idea that we can find more safety by moving out onto acreage. It’s the pioneer mentality, and I feel like we are doing a second injury on top of the injury we already did by colonizing this country. We are basically re-colonizing rural areas.

By the way, everyone in this group, whether or not we ever meet IRL … I so appreciate you all for the deep, authentic conversations we have in here on a daily basis — conversations that as we know are not to be taken for granted, as we can’t necessarily have these conversations with the people in our immediate IRL circles. I consider you all part of my wider family and community, and I wish you all health & joy as we stumble & experiment toward building resilience, whatever that looks like for each of us!!

If you are an activist / educator in the sustainability realm, almost every moment of everyday life can be an opportunity to extend our beneficial influence; share inspiring and useful information.

Even having a contractor visit your house to give an estimate for new windows etc.

Every little interaction you have, even if it’s by phone, you can be mentioning your various resilience things. I have actually worked rainwater collection and my solar oven into idle chitchat with bank tellers and computer tech support while we were waiting for a website to load.

So don’t underestimate the possibilities here!

I read in my local paper-newspaper that the Barbie movie has sparked a fad for vintage dolls. Along those lines, how might we in the low-footprint movement drive an anti-consumer fad?

What sort of movie characters, book characters, plot, and so on might spark a massive and glamorous anti-consumerist trend?

There could be some hilarious character who has a neurotic hatred of single-use plastic. Or a very refined, elegant, possibly sexy character who has the same hatred.

There could be a superhero whose kryptonite is single-use plastic.

There could be a villain who has a fetish for giant, tank-like cars that burn as much petroleum as possible.

There could be a really cool character who can’t stand to keep any money around and is always just putting it out into the community. And the character is joyful and carefree.

Just shallow musing off the top of my head here. There’s lots that could be explored.

Some of my favorite city scape depictions are from the solarpunk movement. I think tall Hong Kong or Tokyo-esque skyscrapers covered with vegetation and all manner of organic beauty.

Special note for fellow boomers: our generation is very very large in number, plus we have a lot of spending power. We started many many fads back in the day, and I hear we are still driving a lot of hot trends even in our geezerdom. So, how might we spark a massive craze for all things simple and anti-consumerist?

Another angle is super creative green. Like in my post “jenny’s corner” the other day I was imagining how I’d love to see our whole city be one giant rain-fed waterpark. With the slides and rides and attractions totally interlaced with, and overlaying, all the houses and shops and other buildings.

That might not be obviously anti-consumerist, as there would be an investment required in infrastructure. However, in the long view, it would be anti-consumerist, as people would be very nourished both physically and emotionally, which would probably stave off cravings for less beautiful, less joyful and soul-nourishing, and more fleeting pleasures.

If something like this waterpark-streetscape came into being, it would raise the bar for beauty and joy, while being ecologically beneficial. I can see it sparking a lot of popular trends.

My experiences living in Tokyo / traveling around Japan in the 1990s, traveling around the UK in the 1980s and a bit of continental Europe, were incredibly mind-expanding and life-changing to me.

I admire how so many of the people I met in other countries are so mindful in their use of resources. And live joyfully and luxuriously with so much less.

People raising whole families in apartments that are probably smaller than one of our cavernous, spooky-white USA kitchens. And they do it in style!

And how beautiful the cities and towns and villages are. The streetscapes.

This might sound like deprivation in relation to the typical big, shiny, everything-pressure-washed USA lifestyle, but in fact I found it elegant, warm, and beautiful.

That’s something that often gets missed by our convenience-centered, USA culture. The sheer beauty and warmth and JOY. I would never trade that for a driveway that’s wide enough to turn a giant tanklike SUV around, or a garage that can accommodate an entire fleet of vehicles. Or free parking, parking, everywhere, at the expense of community and beautiful shaded streets.

People sometimes call people who think like me communist or elitist because we care about the environment, and think certain ways from Europe or Japan or other places are better.

But actually I think it’s the opposite — I think a lot of our USA luxury lifestyle is incredibly wasteful and privileged and elitist.

Also, it can be a lot harder to create close, stable community in the USA than it is in places where people naturally live in closer quarters and have to share resources. It seems like the way we have set up our built environment is not only not conducive to closeness and community and joy, but can be downright erosive of those things.

In my everyday life I do my best to re-create all of the compact elegant beauty I loved so much in Japan and other places I have had the privilege to be able to spend time.

No, I don’t plan to leave the USA. But I do know that things can be a lot better and kinder and more joyous here, and I’m a big fan of taking a page from other countries’ books. And I will never stop trying to help create, everywhere, designs and spaces that are beautiful, warm, and conducive to sharing and connection and joy.