 I've received some interesting responses to my post yesterday wherein I said:
Paradoxically, the less faith I have in the established order and
the ability of civilization's well-intentioned systems to save us from
ourselves, the more energized and exhilarated I become.
To which my fluwiki colleague lugon replied:
I've had that feeling. And even though I have never
attended an Open Space gathering, I guess that's the feeling people
have in such meetings...Released from the bad, bad witch spoonfeeding
us. Taller in a way. Note to self: What's next?
He and David Parkinson and a couple of other readers
refer to the feeling of freedom that comes from going into wilderness
or otherwise finding yourself outside civilization's influence, where
things aren't done for you, and where you have the self-confidence and
ability to make your own decisions and be fully responsible for your
own actions. YOYO (you're on your own), he concludes. Perhaps a better
acronym might be WOOO! (
we're on our own).
The opposite of Learned Helplessness is self-sufficiency and the
self-confidence it brings with it. Kal Joffres suggests that faith in
something that imprisons you is what we call addiction.
Like junkies,
our deluded faiths ("I could quit anytime; it just helps me relax") and
our addictions, work together to lock us in -- there's no way out even
if we wanted one, which we don't. What we need is liberation from all
five types of faith -- economic ("the market will save us"), political
("the opposition party will fix it when they get in"), social ("a great
movement of global consciousness is going to occur"), technological
("our ingenuity will save us"), and theological ("a higher being will
save us").
Lugon's closing question "what's next?" is the point
many of us are at now. It's all well and good to say (as I have)
that we need
to find people we would love to live with, and love to make a living
with, and then establish with them experimental intentional communities
that are self-sufficient, self-managed, ' radically simple', and
outside of and unaddicted to our unsustainable civilization. Most of
us (including me, though I'm getting closer) are not yet ready for
that. So, what's next in the meantime? (Or, to use Getting Things Done
jargon, what's the "first, next action" that will set us on the road to
where we want to get to, eventually)?
My sense is that it's more self-change, oriented to
prepare us for that bold and independent future. I've concluded that my
next Let-Self-Change programs should be based on answers to the
question: What will we need in the world after civilization?
I don't think our generations (either Boomer or Gen X)
will live long enough to see more than the beginning of civilization's
collapse, but answering this question now, and learning what we would
need, could be both liberating (freeing us from the addiction to
civilization even before we're ready to walk away from it), and useful
training for teaching our grandchildren, who will probably need answers
to this question urgently.
Here are some of my "what will we need" answers, that are now directing my Let-Self-Change activities and learning:
-
Good food: Nutritious, unprocessed, unpoisoned, organic, balanced,
and as much as possible native to the places we live or plan to live in.
I'm reading up on native species and permaculture. My goal is to show
my granddaughters how to plant a garden that is nutritious and needs no
artificial chemicals or protection from the elements to thrive.
-
Durable clothing we can make and fix ourselves: I'd like to invent
a computer peripheral that can sew, knit and embroider fabric to
keyed-in specifications, that's as easy to use as a printer. Perhaps we
will ultimately need to re-learn to do these things by hand, but this
is a step in the right direction, away from imported crap that has us
dependent on oil, wage slavery and 'free' trade. We may also need to invent ' wearable home'
clothing that keeps us warm, or cool, in buildings that can no longer
afford the wasteful luxury of heating and air conditioning thousands of
cubic feet of leaky space.
-
Warmth and electricity: I'm learning that solar technology is
jumping ahead of wind technology, and that the combination of the two,
combined with geothermal, can make communities energy-independent at
least at a radically simple lifestyle level. -
Contraception: 'Uncivilized' women breastfed for four years, so
they 'naturally' didn't conceive again more often than that. We need
something different, and the solutions developed so far are either too
complicated or too dangerous. -
Self-managed health: We cannot rely on staggeringly expensive,
grossly overpriced drugs and health services from corrupt and
inept oligopolies. We need to learn to diagnose and treat ourselves for
most conditions (I plan to learn CPR, and basic first aid). - Self-powered transportation: Not just the venerable bicycle, but self-powered vehicles that can carry some cargo, and which work in cold weather.
-
Self-managed education: The model of massively-centralized
education systems that employs people to stand up in front of bored
classes and recite textbooks is hopelessly anachronistic.
Community-based education, based on self-directed learning, will,
thanks to ubiquitous technology and knowledge resources, not only be
easy to introduce, it will be far more effective.
-
Self-managed recreation and entertainment: Jim Kunstler
describes the business of Hollywood as "making violent
masturbation fantasies for 14-year-olds". The music oligopoly makes its
money pimping nursery rhymes grunted by drug-addled gangsters. We
shouldn't have much
trouble learning better, local, sustainable ways to amuse ourselves.
What else will we need? And while we may agree that these are skills
we should learn (or re-learn), are we willing to pay people what it
would cost (no massive subsidies as rewards for corporate political
contributions for us) to show us how
to do it, and/or to provide these things to us until we learn to be
self-sufficient? These are the types of Natural Enterprise I'd like to
create, but I'm not sure there is - yet - a large enough market for
them to be viable, and I don't want to sell only to the rich (and
transporting elite goods all over the world kinda defeats the purpose,
doesn't it?) What do you think? Categories: Let-Self-Change and Building a Community-Based Society |
MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
