"A Mirror Morning" in Port Townsend, Washington taken when I visited there for a Writing It Real Workshop with Sheila Bender.(c) 2007 CVBerg
In this picture, I walk along the beach in Port Townsend, Washington, and find what we are looking for when we shop, when we drink, when we overeat, when we get depressed.
We are looking for something to make us whole. Something without fear, without anger, with beauty.
Our consumer society, with its consumer economy, will never give us the answer, no matter how much we borrow, how much we spend on bank and other bailouts, how many people we kill with our armies, or how many times we could blow up the Earth with Our Weapons of Mass Destruction.
This is what Griff saw in the Carl Sagan video today, and some of what Lisa was saying when she reminded us not to live in fear (of shopping or not shopping?) And what the others were saying on Lisa's post when they said something to the effect of "The American Lifestyle is Not Sustainable, so we Can Not go Back to Buying and Credit Cards the Way We did Before."
What if our economic answer is NOT with bailouts and more spending?
What if the answer is for wiser sustainable shopping with individual spending that
(1)helps local people, Buy-Fresh-Buy-Local farmers, shopkeepers, artisans,(2) spending that saves local energy in our own homes, and (3)spending that makes each person, each family, each community more self-sufficient, therefore more sustainable.
We are too far divorced from the sources of our food, our energy, our water and our waste products to realize exactly how much they actually cost us and the Earth. It makes us vulnerable to disaster when our supplies are cut off, and to poisons when our food is mass produced.
As this economy falters, we can look for local economies that include barter and trading.
We can look to the Amish for ways to minimize the impact of the banking and insurance industry on our families. They band together and rebuild a home instead of paying for fire insurance.
Lisa ends with, "But who loses and who wins in the long run?"
That is what I say....in the long run, who wins? Does this consumer society serve the greatest number of people, does it preserve the planet for future generations or will we be the last great hurrah, leaving our children and grandchildren with nothing?
Shoppers, we have may still have a choice to cut back and quit buying ready made clothes, and everything from Walmart and China. We can instead of sending our money to those countries, making them dependent on us, we could allow them to create their own sustainable societies instead of encouraging them to become the same kind of over-consumers we have created in our society.
These populist ideas by-pass the corporations, and will not make the investors or CEOs rich. But they will give more people a way to eat, be healthier, have water, and save the Earth.
In the end, who wins and who loses?
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and
yes, buying better windows, solar panels, high efficiency heating, inline water heaters, etc is the smart move.
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Miko, Thanks for stopping by!
Lisa, YES. It may be time for us to create our own jobs instead of waiting for the government or corporations to do it. Maybe even create local jobs, close to home, networking. We vote with our dollars. The more we vote locally, the more jobs WE create locally. What if someone started making eco-friendly clothing for their neighbors and their neighbors paid them a fair price, as in the "Fair Trade" international items. We might buy fewer pieces of clothing, but it would be good quality.
Too many investors and CEO's got uber rich under top-down tax loopholes and being allowed to bypass the supposed laws and safeguards... what if those were back in place?
I guess I'm asking if we have to become a virtually socialist society to be acceptably sustainable. I'm not ready to accept that concept yet. I am, however, ready to see quite a few politicians and CEO's and bank presidents jailed.
Well presented, excellent and realistic theme...
Bravo!
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Your ideas are the same as mine. I grew up in such a society. I refused to get a credit card until I was over 30 and I only did it because they offered me an AMEX Platinum card and hardly anyone had them at that time. They got me! One day when doing income tax I saw how much I had spent with credit cards. True, I paid them all off each month, but still, it was a lot of money. I counted them, 24 credit cards, Nieman Marcus (needlessMarkup?), Marshall Fields, Macy's, Carsons, Sears, and several stores that have since gone kaput.+ (Visa-Master Charge) I cancelled these two first, I cancelled them all but AMEX.
Visa-Master Charge were such slimeballs, (they made life miserable for a gal I was dating) .
For some time I have considered using my dual citizenship offer from my great grand parents era, but there is also strong fascism arising there as well as here. I am looking into moving far out in the little remaining country area's. there are several states I like and a country not far from us where the fascists have not yet grabbed control. So, this is my year of decisions-where to go. South America? Many fascists there also. It will come to me and then I will go.
I knew OBama was not the answer but voted for him because the other choice was far too iffy. Fascism which we defeated in WW II is now overwhelming the world once again. Life is not as much fun nor as free as 25 years ago, 15. years ago or even 10 years ago and i think it is about to get worse by and after 2012.
I believe in the Free Market, but I believe that the Free Market has become the “Free-for-All” Market and a cash cow for the already rich. There are some things that the government has to obligation to set the rules for, and those are the things that we are currently having terrible problems with because of the “privatization,” of huge sectors of government responsibility like banking, insurance, and health care.
As to the trading model? I think that is one of those things that will live out its useful life and die of natural causes, just like the insurance industry and the banking industry have been trying to lately. Even the smallest of the exchange traded companies are huge. I don’t know that huge will continue to be sustainable as we run out of resources. Maybe it will, maybe it won’t. Didn’t work with AIG.
I don’t like to see my IRA tank, as it has been, because I have had some wonderful returns before now. What I have had to say to myself is.....it isn’t “real money.” It is based on investor mood. It is a gamble....and we are gamblers. We will need money to live in the foreseeable future, but we can move away from it by reducing dependence on banks and shifting to credit unions(banking coops), and becoming producers and not just consumers.
I do not believe that we have to become socialist to become sustainable, but we do have to become more integrated. We need to get to know our neighbors, and develop groups of friends/people who can help each other when needed. We have to become more informed and more supportive “locally.” What I see happening right now is a movement by groups of people who have banded together and are forming coops and 501(c)3 not-for-profit companies, or they are forming a socially and environmentally responsible company. “The Body Shop” was one of the first pioneering the “Fair Trade” movement, and has been followed by Seventh Generation, and a retinue of others you can find in Coop America’s Green Pages. In fact, Seventh Generation was an outgrowth of Coop America, as I understand.
I looked at an MBA in Sustainability at Maharishi University of Management last year which focuses on building companies that do no harm, but still make money and are sustainable. It is no longer “business as usual.” The people, companies, and institutions who are socially conscious deserve our financial vote. I have become very conscious of how I spend my money, and others are beginning to do the same. The more that people know about where their goods and food comes from, the better choices they can make.
All of this works within our current system. We just need to make better choices as individuals, and support better choices by our government. Easy? No. Essential? Yes.
grif, I hope you get a chance to see my reply to Sally's post. I believe that the solution to the crisis has already begun with the "local" movement. Now we just have to get a "Fair Trade" system that guarantees a price to the U.S. small farmers that will pay their expenses, their farm, their children's education, and make them a small profit. At the moment? Farmers have to PAY, hold two or three additional jobs, just to farm here. They do it because there is a soul healing feel to working the land. (I am a card-carrying-farmer member of Practical Farmers of Iowa.)
Obviously we are both brilliant if we share the same ideas here. I think that there is a grass roots revolution that is changing the paradigm for our society.
I have explored leaving the United States more than once. I love traveling, and joined International Living a couple of years ago, looking at buying property in Central America. But I have a daughter that is still not quite independent yet, so I am rather stuck, even though I also have been looking for a place to “land.”
Maybe Iowa is not too bad. Beautiful countryside (ie:Grant Wood), intelligent people(mostly), deep soil, solid values, plenty of rain, opportunity to live off the land, Iowa Writers Workshop within 30 minutes. So, I am in the process of making plans for an eventually-off-the-grid co-housing eco-community. We have the land and the architect.
It is interesting to explore International Living, but how does your family feel about it? I could see doing it part time...especially in the winter. BTW, where is your dual citizenship?
Glad you like the post!
Carol
I wrote the country into the comment but accidently lost it when I revised it ITALY! Living and dying in Italy nestled among the art of the great ones, wow! Take a look at Castello Di'Bagnolo online. My long lost Cousins, which I never met, inhabit it to this day.
Opened this post because I wanted to say, I love that picture - it is so timeless and like a poem!
At the moment, I am living in the largest co housing community in the USA. I came here to spend some time with one of my best friends, and to get the tai chi on my bones; but I believe I was drawn here also to live in this community and learn from the experience. The biggest resource we have is our people; but people have to know that there are alternatives to what we know. Thank you for your contributions.
I knew you were a kindred spirit. I spent six weeks in '07 at Shoshoni Ashram outside of Boulder becoming a yogini. It was the BEST six weeks of my life. I was sorry to have to come back home, but here I have responsibilities. Thanks for your comments, and your input.
Local is pickled cabbage, pickled cucumbers, apples and potatoes that haven't rotten in storage and lettuce. Apples and potatoes are much less likely to rot in storage if the storage is climate controlled (ie using energy). In December and January, the heated greenhouses growing lettuce need to supply light as the sun doesn't produce enough.
The traditional diet had people emerging in spring with what they called avitaminosis, to be cured with stinging nettle soup since stinging nettles are the first good source of vitamin C you can harvest. Stinging nettles taste kind of weedy.
I'm all for jettisoning the millions of cheap doo-dads bought at the equivalent of Walmart, but you Californians make me laugh with the "buy local food" stuff in winter.
Yes, Moscow is a bit colder than even Northern California...maybe more like Duluth, Minnesota, or Wisconsin, Canada, or even Iowa where I live. Yes, there isn't even enough sun for greenhouses to grow vegetables, UNLESS you have developed a Cold Climate Green House that collects twice as much sun using a reflective insulated shutter, and have made the greenhouse out of straw bales sealed with plaster, and heated with waste heat or geothermal heating that uses no additional energy. It is amazing what can be done in a really cold climate. And yes, sometimes eating local will mean eating saurkraut and other pickled vegetables, or canned tomatoes, etc. I visited Moscow in 1999, and visited one large indoor farmers market which was probably just in summer. I noticed that there were many many dochas...is that the word for Summer House? They had little vegetable gardens everywhere. I think that in Russia it is possible that you are normally eating better quality more or less local foods than we do here in America. My state is one of the richest soil in agriculture, but all of our food is driven by truck an average of 1500 miles to our grocery stores, both summer and winter. It comes to Iowa from California where it is grown on irrigated desert land, or Mexico where it has replaced the local foods that they used to grow for their own people who are now having food shortages because they export their food to us first, or from Florida, and sometimes Arkansas.
I think that it is crazy for people who live in the richest agricultural land to buy all of their food from other states, and not from their own farmers!!! They farmers are all poor because they can't make a living wage with their corn and soybeans, or other things. They have to work jobs in town in addition to running their farms in order to feed their children and send them to school...and to EAT, too! That is just nuts. We have to quit this insanity. Please come to visit me on my little farm in the U.S. I would love to be your host! Thank you so much for your excellent comment and your interest in my post.
Good thinking, Carol.
but it was surprising to read about pickled vegetables and tough winters, until people spell it out one doesn't realize this esply living in tropics. winter here is one of the best seasons! when u can breathe kind of. all our festivals are therefore bet Oct and Jan.
did u say 'ashram'? thats an Indian word. 'shoshoni' too. whats that about? why do u want to be yogini?
and here is hoping all of you that have to go thru such tough winters, get some sunshine soon
The country has changed a lot since 1999. Sushi restaurants abound. We're a long way from the sea. That fresh fish is all being flown in. The vegetables are, most of the year. A lot of the fresh produce you saw in 1999 was from the south -- probably as far away as CA produce from Iowa, if not farther. Or from the former republics.
The local chicken industry is just getting on its feet. Before that, drumsticks were called "Bush legs" because people knew Bush and not Tyson.
Dacha land near the city is/has been converted to suburbs. Traffic has become FAR worse and the further out dacha are now a 2-3 hour trip (on Friday night and Sunday morning). You can get locally grown produce that has spewed the same quantity of greenhouse gases in the growing as something flown in from South Africa.
I appreciate your invitation to visit. I'm not sure you're aware that I'm an expat American. Because I have Russian friends, I tend to defend the Russian point of view, but my take on what Russians think is filtered through an American perspective.