Freeconomy Blog
Sun
20 Apr
Why did I take the red pill…?
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Sometimes, just every now and then, I wish I had taken the blue pill. You know that scene in The Matrix, where Morpheus offers Neo a choice between two pills; if he takes the blue bill, he carries on existing habitually in a zombie like state, accepting everything he has been conditioned to believe since he was born into this world. However, if he takes the red pill, he has the opportunity to seek truth, but he must give up every one of the myths he had previously based his whole life on.
One such blue-pill-wishing moment was yesterday afternoon, as I rather embarrassingly slipped in the mud whilst carrying a tonne of topsoil from the base of the allotment site to the top. But when I got up and looked at the view beneath me, I realised there was more truth in one squared centimetre of that soil than there was in a whole edition of the Daily Mirror.
Just on that, I have felt like Alice all this week, looking down that rabbit hole, seeing how deep it actually goes, and it has taught me a lot about how I have been living my life up to now. I had always believed I was living an environmentally and animal friendly life, whatever that actually means. How wrong was I! The more I examine my life these days, the more I know I wasn’t (and am still not) living in harmony with the true Nature of this planet, instead swimming against its tide.
The use of plastics is not something I ever thought of as a vegan issue before. But think about it – the plastics that have been used to package our food have all been animal tested, apparently, to make them save for human use. As if we are biologically the same as a beagle dog (!) – testing on humans would be the safest thing to do, but, you see, that would be cruel. On top of that, if food isn’t organic then it isn’t vegan, as not only are pesticides also animal tested, they kill lots of wildlife! Which leads be to think that the only way to be truly vegan is to eat local veganic food without plastic packaging – as if it wasn’t hard enough for all you veggies and vegans out there!
By the way, I do understand that given that 1% of any western countries population is vegan, most of you won’t be, and that is totally cool, I am not arguing veganism here and it is certainly not a tenet of freeconomy for everyone. All I am trying to do is help everyone think of the repercussions of everything we buy and do as far down the chain as possible. And the deeper you look, the more unhealthy for Gaia the vast majority of purchases looks. It may sound grim, but it doesn’t have to be. Another way is possible.
On another note, I was very glad not only to hear yesterday that there was such a thing called No Trash Week, but also that it started today. The goal of the game is to see if can you live for a week without putting one item in the non-recyclable bin, and if not to see how much you can limit it to. My own no-bin experiment has been going just over two weeks now, and to be honest is getting very easy, to the point that I can no longer understand why I had one in the first place. No other species has one, and a society that has one is not working with the cycles of nature, as simple as that.
After breaking myself out of the habit of going to the loo whenever I need a pee, it occurred to me the next logical step would be to build a compost toilet. How glad was I the following day when I got an email from Dan, a guy who I met on my walk without money and the organiser of the amazing Sunrise Celebration Festival, asking me if I would come and work as part of their volunteer team building – wait for it – compost toilets for a few days! Stroke of luck or the universe assisting that which works with it? – I’d say the latter, but then again I would!
Just on the peeing thing, I done some calculations on this and realised that if all the adults of the US, for example, stopped peeing in their water supply 1.83 trillion litres of flush water would be saved each year in the US alone, and that based on only a 5 pee-a-day routine!
After writing last week about the fact I don’t use soap products when washing anymore, I realised that it wasn’t very helpful to those of you who still want to use them! Well nature comes to the rescue again with a great perennial plant called soapwort. This plant is rich in saponins which produce a lather in water, and crushing the roots and leaves and shaking them in warm water will create this effect nicely. It can also be used for shampoo if, unlike me, you have some hair to wash. It was widely used in the past and is often found near old Roman baths and wool mills, as it was used to wash both people and wool in the past.
Often people ask me what is the best thing they can do to rebuild their local communities. To be honest, it depends on how broken down that community is, but one thing that never fails is to organise your own street party. Getting people together is the starting point for doing anything – people are far more likely to co-operate when they know each other. And how much fun! Obvious really!
To that effect I am in the process of organising a launch event for the Bristol Freeconomy Community. It will be a day of workshops on skills we are going to need in the future, music, clothes swapping, freecycling, food-sharing, talks and debates. The whole event will be free for everyone and run by volunteers. By the way, if anyone from Bristol or the south-west is reading and wants to get involved, we are looking for all sorts of volunteers, workshop holders, musicians, speakers and cooks! Just email me on saoirse@justfortheloveofit.org or phone me on 0044 775 886 1783. For those outside of Bristol, all will be welcome and once it’s over we will be assessing it and using the results to provide a model for other towns and cities to use if they so wish.
Today I’ll leave you with Kahlil Gibran’s take on what it is to work with nature, as hard as it sometimes pretends to be…
"And what is it to work with love? It is to weave the cloth with threads drawn from your heart, even as if your beloved were to wear that cloth. It is to build a house with affection, even as if your beloved were to dwell in that house. It is to sow seeds with tenderness and reap the harvest with joy, even as if your beloved were to eat the fruit."
Work is love made visible. Let us treat this planet then as if that person that you love most had to live on it.
[PS: WE ARE IN THE PROCESS OF CHANGING THE ‘COMMENT’ SYTEM (below) HERE DUE TO SOME PEOPLE TAKING ON A NUMBER OF PSEUDONYMS AND SOME EVEN PRETENDING TO BE ME! WE ARE IN THE PROCESS OF IMPROVING IT BUT ARE ALL A BIT STRETCHED HERE AT THE MINUTE.
AS IT STANDS, TO ‘COMMENT’ YOU MUST SIGN IN FIRST, THEN GO TO ‘BLOG’ ON THE NAVIGATIONAL BAR AT THE TOP, CLICK ‘READ THIS STORY IN FULL’ AND THEN CLICK COMMENT, USING YOUR USERNAME IN THE NAME FIELD]
Comment on this Post:
Jane comments ...
I think it’s great not to pee into our water supply too much. I am not pouring my liquid gold onto my compost yet, but have decided to stop flushing as frequently. I saw a saying on a website recently that said ’if it’s yellow, then it’s mellow, if it’s brown, flush it down’. Now we only flush about twice a day in our house instead of what would have been about twelve times (I drink a lot of tea!)
I have often thought that it is horrible that a pee of some eight fluid ounces is flushed away using so many litres of water when in some parts of the world, the contents of that toilet cistern might be the daily water supply for three or four people, carried long distances and used for essentials like drinking and cooking.
I have recently come up with the idea of siphoning off my shower water into several buckets and pouring that into the cistern and using that to flush instead. Haven’t done it yet but will do so as soon as I can get hold of some tubing.
Also, best of luck with the no plastic thing. I have been boycotting supermarkets for nearly a year now and that really reduces the plastic, but I still produce about two small carrier bags a week full of plastic and it has to be said that includes the bags! Organic yogurts, veggie sausages, pre packed nuts, cereals etc all come in the dreaded stuff. It’s a bugger to avoid!
Littlelynn1 comments ...
No Trash Week is something that happens every year in Ontario’s schools here in Canada. Earth Day is very big here and most schools and many businesses participates in clean-ups in the neighbourhood, energy-saving measures etc. I know Earth Day has gone but maybe schools in the UK could adopt more of these ideas into their curriculum (if they don’t already).
Check out the websites (especially their links) to see:
http://www.earthday.ca/pub/index.php
We also have Clean Air Day, Environment Week & National Wildlife week, to name a few. Freecycle networks are growing fast. And Canadians were one of the largest groups to sign up for Earth Hour last month. Just last week many stores started to pull off the shelves items made with No 7 plastic. I’m not Canadian - I’m a Brit and I miss the UK like crazy, but I do love the amount of environmental awareness that exists here. (though of course, big thumbs down for the seal hunt).
pea coil comments ...
so is this shutting down of the oil pipeline in scotland just a way of researching and testing futute pea coil scenarios.or am i just a conspiracy theorist ;0)
Michelle comments ...
Hey, I see you’ve just joined the www.selfsufficientish.com forum. It’s a great little site, maybe you could put it in the links section?
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