Scott having a bad day, ranting.
Q: Do you consider your lifestyle truly sustainable?
A: In short, no. We are using less resources, but that just slows down the inevitable. If only one quarter of the pit mines were still operating, and only one quarter of the laborers are working in a shoe factory, and only one quarter of the chemicals were running into rivers… Who is going to be the person who works in the factory manufacturing these super toxic computers, under miserable conditions and shortened lifespan? Who is the guy who works in the mines, extracting the iron for our trucks, or bicycles, or machetes? I keep going in the direction of using less-toxic materials, or fewer resources, but I get confused. Being “more” sustainable is not sustainable. It just delays the damage. Here’s a quote from a movie: “You’re on this train heading for a bridge, and the bridge is out, and all you have time to do is run to the back of the train”
What I am trying to say, in terms of our consumption practices, that something drastic needs to happen other than just doing less of the same. Other than our success in food production, try as I may, my lifestyle is not substantially better for the planet than everyone else. It’s just less of the same. I am feeling deep disappointment in the ability of humans to actually live in harmony with the earth. Why do we need so much stuff? I am riding right down the middle of a global ecological crisis. I know what is going down. I even identify myself as part of the solution. But I know that’s a crock o’ poop.
My assertion that my lifestyle is not substantially different from a normal american lifestyle is evidenced by the stuff I use. Almost every item that I depend on is made within the same industrial system as everyone else. I am using the same products. Who isn’t? There is no alternative industrial system. When I am using animal bones, plant fibers, and stones to meet my needs, then I am outside the system. The rest of the time, I am within our industrial complex. Where would I be without access to lead acid batteries? Telephone? Our massive transportation system? Pipes, wires, glass, plastic, steel, concrete? My ‘alternative’ infrastructure will last as long as I can get replacement parts for it. As soon as I am one plumbing fitting short of complete, I will be hauling water in buckets (until they degrade, too). As soon as my roof rusts out, all my books and belongings are soon to be soil. Almost all of my techniques for meeting my daily needs are adaptations to industrial products. Aside from the food production, my farm is an experiment in using modern industrial products in slightly different ways. Unfortunately, it is not about building entirely new relationships with meeting our physical needs.
As I see it, there are two ways to profoundly change our relationship to how we live on the land. One, discover and invent new technologies. this is the job of a scientist. Two, learn primitive skills. I am doing neither. I am using “alternative” technologies (like solar electricity and water heating) that someone else already invented. No brainer. The rest is no big difference. My plumbing system looks alot like everyone elses. PVC and glue. My electric system: romex and lead acid batteries. And so on, with minor differences. Sure, I am car free. No car. but how do you think I’m getting to the dentist on thursday? On a donkey?
An alternative lifestyle is one that demonstrates a different direction. “Reduce, reuse, recycle” is the same direction, but slower. What matters is the baby steps toward increasing our awareness. What matters is changing how we relate to the land we live upon. An abusive relationship needs fundamental change, no just fewer or milder incidents of abuse.
I will give one hopeful example of how our infrastructure is fundamentally different than a regular house: Our grey water simply runs out of our house and pours on top of the ground onto food trees, rather than into a tank underground. This creates a loop, a cycle, of resource use rather than a line segment with an end point. That little step can allow people to see that our life on this earth is made up of loops like that one. People notice that the coffee grounds don’t vanish when they go down the drain. In fact, the plants at the receiving end seem to be happier with the coffee grounds etc. accumulating around their roots. Watching people learn from this little twist sustains me.
Alex Murphy
Commented on April 9th, 2010
The global growth economy is sick. It’s a new paradigm shift that we need. Elements of this shift include cooperation in the R&D of things. Instead of competition which leads to resource waste and environmental degradation. We can design for longevity and include cradle to cradle design..
New technologies aren’t going to solve the ecological damage that we’ve caused which are in large part due to our fictitious partitioning of earth into segments which individuals can do what they please with. Combine that with the need for profit to survive and people will do what they have to do even if it’s not in there long term interest.
We’ve radically changed the face of the earth to such a degree that going back to living a lifestyle without the use of technology from the industrial revolution and beyond becomes problematic.
The very process of evolution favored things that used tools and thus technology. Yet, we have segments of the global culture yearning for a life without or just less use of technology. Elements of this mindset should be taken into account. Primarily sustainability. However, within the monetary system such pursuits are hampered. More so the monetary system is the enemy of sustainability due to the pursuit of profit for greed and the need to survive which leads to planned obsolescence as can be seen in electronic devices, unending competition which leads to inferior devices and resource waste, the need for cyclical consumption to maintain the global economy thus the consumeristic culture, and probably other things which I have yet to encounter.
~Alex
Catarina
Commented on April 11th, 2010
Wow, for being a bad day you sure don’t lose your sense of humor. A donkey. Ha!
I particularly enjoyed your quote about our ongoing abusive relationship with he land, “An abusive relationship needs fundamental change, no just fewer or milder incidents of abuse.” That really puts some things into perspective for me. Thank you for sharing.
Stan
Commented on April 11th, 2010
Interesting website! I don’t think you should be so hard on yourself. Sounds like you have really reduced your environmental footprint. Your farm is gobbling up CO2 and producing 80% of your food. Yes, you are using some “industrially produced” materials and gadgets. But if you take care of them and use them for a long time, that’s okay. There has always been some technological progress, even long before the twentieth century. When the oil runs out, we in the “real world” will be eating each other, but you will be sitting pretty on your farm in Hawaii.
Cassie
Commented on April 20th, 2010
I am running into the same fundamental problems as you are. When you take the thought experiment to its maximum, you begin to wonder where this will end. Have you read “No Impact Man”? It’s an interesting book about whether or not we can live without creating trash. I have started writing a blog called Fruitfulista where I am trying to sort through this sort of stuff in my mind just as you are.
Sometimes I think, why are the necessary choices so difficult to make, but the most awful and destructive ones are so easy? Like you said with your comment about abuse, it’s like we have a culture that says you are not worth anything unless you abuse and abuse and abuse. And people who try to call them out on it are the crazy, wild ones.
I think about the Amish as a modern example of people who have managed to stay away from many of the things in this modern world that are killing us. i think you and your family are doing a great job as well.
We need more ways to make this the easy way. Why is fast food easier to get than an apple? Why are the best choices the hardest and the worst the easiest?
Can You Live Without Money | Fruitfulista
Commented on April 22nd, 2010
[...] reading articles like The Man Who Lived Without Money and this blog post by someone trying to live sustainably in Hawaii, it makes me wonder. It seems that unless you are willing to give up a lot -and basically live like [...]
arthur
Commented on April 30th, 2010
I liked what you said!!!
(I’ll be expecting, my new star when I get back)
Scott Middlekauf
Commented on May 20th, 2010
Can You Live Without Money?
I would add that this question can be answered from the supply side of things. I mean, what do I really need? And, where does it come from? Wendell Berry is one of my heroes, and he often refers to how we interact with the land we live upon. The land is the basis of all our survival needs. Everything we use is either mined or grown. So, let’s say the money question has two parts: permission to occupy a piece of land on one hand, and all other needs on the other. Once you have some productive land, you can be as self sufficient as you’d like, and you can separate yourself from the industrial system. The gangs (powers that be) know this, and make sure that there are plenty of folks who are landless and need to work for money. If ‘they’(owners of factories, etc) can keep the land out of the hands of the ‘peasants’ then there will always be a supply of cheap (desperate) labor and loads of folks who gotta have money to meet their survival needs. Once you have land, the whole equation has to do with how essential industrial products are to you. If I live my whole life with stone tools, and someone hands me a pocket knife, I would go nuts! “For one hour of work I can have one of these?” The same goes for bicycles, computers, and so on. My wife and I sometimes play this game where we compare which industrial product would we give up first, second, and which we would hold on ’till last: lighting, refrigeration, internet, automobile, phone, hot shower. Today, I’d lose the shower first, and hold on to the internet ’till last. (If you choose to give up the automobile, you have to decide whether hitch hiking is cheating.) So, the need for money depends on whether you consider certain industrial products and services to be luxuries, or necessities. If we suddenly had zero access to industrial products, one thing that would freak me out is not having shoes. Losing basic human mobility is scary. I have heard of a nomadic tribe in Malaysia who had one industrial item: a cooking pot. So when you talk about living without money, the issue could be framed in terms of: where does our important stuff come from? Can I weave it? Can I grow it? In the book “Guns, Germs, and Steel”, a New Guinea farmer asks a westerner “How come you people have so much cargo?” That book, and Daniel Quinn’s “Ishmael” are two attempts to answer that question.