Words are easy, you know...but actions, they're a tougher breed of thing altogether. Words can be cast around flippantly with little effort to suit the occasion you are trying to manipulate, the message you're trying to convey, the image you are trying to give. But actions.... that's where the energy is.
You can't be flippant about actions, or can we? I was about to launch down a different path with this blog, but I have just digressed myself onto a path worth processing now...
As creatures we invest energy in things - except, unlike the rest of the creatures, we have created for ourselves this easy system where the energy is to easily replaced for a growing majority of us. Most living things expend energy to get energy - they can't be flippant about it becuase energy supply is not guaranteed. The survival of a species can be made or ended on chasing the wrong piece of food. If you don't catch it, that might have been your last chance.
Not us people. Most of us don't expend anywhere near enough energy to burn up the amount we consume. For goodness sake.. a lot of us actually go to gyms to burn off the stuff we didn't break a sweat to gather. What have we become?
Is this the pinacle of evolution that all creatures should aspire to if only they have the cognitive power to do so? Are we now at the top of some ridculous ladder of greatness that some ethnocentric scholar created?
No. We aren't. We're a sad by-product of our own misguided intelligence. And we are apathetic about it. We may not have lost more knowledge in the last half decade than we've gained but I would suggest that the quality of that knowledge and the skills the majority of us have not bothered to pick up translates to make that loss very important. Can you grow things? Do you know how to feed your family from your garden? Do you know how to preserve food for the winter? Do you knit or sew? Can you make tools? Purify water? Do you even know where your nearest supply of water would be if your tap stopped magically delivering it to your kitchen? Some of these things will be things you remember from your childhood. Someone knitted in your family, someone grew things and cooked them and put them on the table for you to eat.
Do you know where the rubbish goes when it leaves your house? What about the water from your kitchen sink or your shower? Humans are the only animal that doesn't live in a sustainable manner. Basically we shit where we live. In the natural world that's stupid.
Unfortunately, due to wonderful infrastructure and management systems, the majority of us live well isolated and disconnected from the way things actually work. Do your kids know where milk comes from? Do they know that beef is a cow? what about bacon? What are chips made of? When things start to go bad, they will do so in such a rapid way we will be forced to exercise our ability to adapt radically to changing circumstances. I yearn to be ready for that.
I decided to be the change I want to see in the world. It started off small. With me doing what I do, saying what I say, thinking what I think. But it's all very well me having the attitudes I do and the knowledge I do and the awareness I do, but in real terms it means little. It doesn't change the world enough to keep me sleeping at night. My desrire for social action is growing to match my ability to make it happen.
Tonight I attended a public meeting. A gathering of people who understand something is happening and want to know what to do. We are not sitting by and waiting for government to do it - because that would be too late, it's already too late. Government is too big and slow and unweldy. We are going to take back what is really important and just start doing things ourselves.
My town is a transition town. We are not the first one and we will nto be the last one.
A transition town is a group of people living in a place wanting to explore ways to live in a more sustainable way, a more responsible way - a way that will provide for us through the period we are moving into - decline of oil supply and changing climate patterns. Transition Town initiatives will facilitate creative and pro-active responses to energy resource depletion as well as being a ripping good bonding time for the community!
We are a group that is re-localising our community to make it stronger, "resilient and truely sustainable".
The meeting raised many issues that people wanted to explore and then we broke into smaller groups based on what drew our attention and focus. We discussed ideas in these groups and created next steps and actions. I am interested in local organic food and this is the area I have been drawn to over the last half year, in particular the concept of permaculture. I keep banging into it everywhere I go so I joined that discussion and by the end of July I shall be part of a permaculture culture! Things are changing, and they are changing now!
It's exciting!
Below are some links if you want to explore the Transition Town global movement.
Totnes - the first transition town
Transition Towns New Zealand
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