Radical Simplicity is Hard.. --JD

So I'm on my 5th-or-so day of biking everywhere, and not riding in or driving a personal car.

I have a huge blister on my fat ass and am sunburned.  Poor me! --Grin. My cousin wants me to watch her kid and a friend, and I had to tell her that they'd have to bring bikes if they want to go anyplace once they're here. I avoided a party with my family last night because I didn't feel like biking my fat ass up the canyon, where they live. (More specifically, I didn't want to have to bike home down the narrow canyon with crazy drivers in the dark.) Taxis might have to become one of my interim strategies..

Reading "Radical Simplicity" by Jim Merkel, and it's blowing my mind. I'm looking around for everything I could do without, and getting grumpy. It's way too much. I need to prioritize. I think I need a plan, like months to years, because this is major detox, but I'm addicted to like, 1000 drugs (isn't there an anti-war song that says that)? 1000 First World socioeconomic drugs.

I pretty much feel like having a heart attack if I imagine giving up the internet. Or the TV. Or my iPod. I got my graduate degree in Technological Communications, for the love of God. (Ok, ok, Merkel was a technological engineer who made high-grade weapons systems. He wins.) But I believe in the transformative power of technology. I believe technology can be used for good. We got Obama elected using the internets... 

I gotta calm down. What CAN I do differently without keening and wailing, as I warm up to this new way of evaluating my life? That is, what Merkel calls "Earth efficiency." The most value and sustenance using the least amount of land and resources. This is a form of capital or currency, as opposed to, say, monetary production or "time saving" in the pursuit of monetary production. It reminds me a little of Al Gore, who said we need to switch to a carbon-based economy (that is, rewarding carbon efficiency). 

But I need to think first of the close targets, the low-hanging fruit, as it were..

We already recycle a lot and compost most everything we can. But we still throw away a lot. So,

--Reducing waste. Buying in bulk. Avoiding plastic where possible.

--Local food. Local drink. Organic whenever possible. Rewarding establishments with local, organic and sustainable practices.

--I think personally I can go without meat, and can eat eggs from our free-range chickens. As for the family, I just badgered dear Gary ("I didn't fight my way to the top of the food chain to eat plants!") to bike with me over to the college farm (mostly pastured animals, humanely treated) to buy meat for the week. But I know any large-volume, methane-producing, grain-eating animal meat (pork, cattle) is not really sustainable. Goats are really what thrive here, in the semi-arid desert that desperately needs firebreaks.

--I can do without milk, but cheese and cream? Another story entirely. We're already buying milk/cheese from a cooperative (Organic Valley) that buys from the College Farm a mile away. I wonder if I can switch my dairy addiction slowly to goat.. Dear Gary's daughter has one and is generous with the goat yogurt.. Ack, but the cream for my coffee, it can't be goat or soy.. ick!

--Which brings me to coffee. It comes from 2000 miles away at least. Oyoyoy. Ending coffee might be one of my down-list accomplishments. Meantime, organic Fair Trade Shadegrown from the Co-Op.  

--Conservation. This I can do. Turning off all our computers and electronics. As little A/C as possible (tough, in this climatic kiln). We have a pool (doughboy), in-ground (I know. But there's no getting rid of it, not my call). It might be a matter of tossing myself and the dogs in it throughout the day.

--Killing the car use. This is the big one. Does it matter that revenge against the oil companies is my main motive?

Back to reading Merkel..

Swaraj and Swadeshi --by AnneML ('Animal')

Gandhi wrote that Swaraj (self-rule) without swadeshi (country-made goods) is a lifeless corpse. 

For years, multinational companies have used third-world countries to hone their techniques of control over markets, economies and governments. The history of Gandhi’s struggle in India is ample testament to this. The fact that he included swadeshi and khadi as essential elements of resisting these forces is extremely important.

The current BP oil spill crisis is a clear lesson to us how these economic and political control mechanisms are at work here in the US. Our dependence on oil is not something that just happened. There have been many machinations in the course of the past century that served to eliminate or cripple alternatives to petroleum in a variety of industries. In addition to this, specific developments leading to the BP oil spill are clear examples of these control mechanisms. BP used lobbying and manipulation to minimize federal regulation that would complicate their deep offshore drilling; the US federal requirement of a disaster response plan for BP’s deep well in the Gulf was conveniently eliminated.   

The US government was not in a position, itself, to deal with a major deep-water oil spill. However, BP was permitted to drill off US shores without a plan to address easily imaginable problems that might arise from what they were doing. Now that the disastrous oil spill has happened, the federal government is pretty much incapable of applying sanctions or pressure on BP.  “It’s complicated,” says Obama. Maybe not so much.
 

The simple fact is that we do not have swaraj (self-rule) here in the US. This is not government “of, by, and for the people.”  This is government subjugated to the mega-corporations and oligarchies that transcend national borders and hold the power cards.

 

We also do not have swadeshi (country-made goods). The vast majority of people in the US are immersed in and dependent upon a mass market that has less and less to do with country-made goods. Try to find genuine “Made in USA” products in many product markets. Oh, they may be there, but they are huddled in amongst a plethora of competing products that were manufactured in other countries even if the product name is ostensibly “American.” 

Small businesses face huge and often unfair competitive pressures from mega-corporations. If a small business is successful, it too often gets swallowed up by some larger corporation. Sobe teas and elixirs were a great product; Sobe is now owned by Pepsi, and its original line of products has been discontinued. Burt’s Bees, the “Earth Friendly, Natural Personal Care Company,” is now owned by Clorox. Geez. 

Communities that want to establish their own, sustainable solar energy projects are increasingly threatened by roadblocks like California’s Proposition 16, promulgated by Pacific Gas & Electric, and only narrowly defeated at the polls. And so on and so on.

 

Can we have Swaraj (self-rule) without swadeshi (country-made goods)? Gandhi didn’t think so, and neither do I. Our swaraj may not yet be a “lifeless corpse,” but it is badly in need of some resuscitation.
 

So, what to do. Gandhi used khadi (hand-spun, hand-woven, and hand-sewn cloth) as a symbol of the essence of swaraj. All sorts of terms are associated with khadi: self-reliance, self-sustainability, “decentralized units of self-sustaining ecologies.” 

One term associated with khadi that I find particularly interesting is “non-cooperation.” We do not have to cooperate with the multinationals and mega-corporations. Every effort on the individual and community level to achieve sustainability is an act of non-cooperation. Revolutionary, indeed.

Starting Where We're At --by JD

So, we're hardly the nonviolent-life Avatars (half our age, half the time) that we see around us in our progressive little town. But we gotta start where we are. And we're not in the same place we were even a few years ago, which tells us that even when you're as lazy as we are, change can happen.

Part of this game for us will be to talk about where we are, from whence we've come, and where we'd like to go, both the baby steps and the leaps.

This morning, after the dogs kicked us out of (their) bed and demanded their eggs & rice, we had to hustle the 3 miles down to the church to hear Chris Moore-Backman speak for an hour about Gandhi's practices and the wheel.

We rode our bikes, mostly out of rage at seeing more photos in the morning paper of the BP oil spill and the struggling, suffering, poisoned wildlife. Biking even that little way made me feel LESS angry, which makes me think guilt is a big part of my anger.

And the spinning of our bike tires made me think of Gandhi's spinning wheel, and how it was a spiritual practice for his community that became a symbol of their movement. Maybe the spinning bike wheel will become a symbol for a new Gandhian movement the USA.

Part of my current challenge with "withdrawing support from violent structures and building alternatives" is getting off of petroleum as much as humanly possible. Which is rough. That is, the amount of planning that goes into biking places, especially at night.

So part of my adjustment for now will be the easy steps. That is, bike where I CAN. Which actually is most places, most of the time.

Where the adjustment is much more difficult, I am considering spending double or triple the amount of money/energy/time associated with the petrol on alternative energy sources and movements--like carbon credits, but probably something I can more easily verify and take action toward locally.

It's not ideal, but it's a way for me to remove the unconscious aspect of the petroleum use, and begin to at least pro-actively address the vague sense of degradation I feel when I drive. Anyone else out there struggling with the driving thing?

All for now. Must go water the parched garden.