How
To Save The World
By Dave Eriqat
10 April, 2006
Countercurrents.org
Preface
Awakening as the day’s
first rays of sunlight brighten my bedroom, I dress hurriedly and run
downstairs. Even though it’s a Saturday, I’m eager to get
to “work.” Passing through the kitchen on my way to the
back door, I notice that my wife, Anna, has already made some coffee.
Pouring myself a cup, I take it with me as I head out the back door
on my way to my workshop. My workshop is where I work. I’ve been
self employed as a furniture maker for a couple of years now, and presently
I’m working on a fine dresser for my neighbor, Sam. As I cross
the yard on the way to my workshop, I see Anna tending our garden. Our
young son William is feeding our small flock of chickens and other animals,
intermittently playing with our two beautiful dogs.
We’ve had so many tomatoes
this year that we’ve been trading them to the neighbors for their
surplus produce. It’s been absolutely marvelous to enjoy such
a variety of fresh, organic produce in this abundant year. I still recall
the tasteless, wax-like produce we used to buy in the commercial grocery
stores years ago, thinking that was normal. I’d never shop in
another grocery store for produce after tasting what I and my neighbors
can produce.
In addition to tomatoes,
our garden produces several dozen other types of fruits, vegetables,
beans, and herbs. Besides corn that we acquire from local farmers, we
feed our chickens food scraps that we would otherwise throw away. In
return our chickens produce the best tasting eggs imaginable, their
poop is a surprisingly good fertilizer, and they are effective pest
controllers. In all, our plot of land produces about half our food.
The other half comes from my talent as a furniture maker. The dresser
I’m making for Sam will provide us with meat from his farm for
several months.
I used to work in Manhattan
as an accountant for a large firm, where I was paid a large salary.
My wife and I owned a great condo, a nice car, and had all the trendiest
gadgets. We dined in the finest restaurants, went to Broadway shows,
and occasionally flew first class to Europe. We really thought we were
“fulfilled.” One day, while reading about the “downshifting”
trend in Europe, I realized just how unfulfilling our life really was.
I also came to appreciate how little control we had over our lives.
I was totally dependent on my employer to maintain our precarious existence.
Without my high paying job, we’d promptly be forced to give up
our nice condo, car, and luxurious living. I discussed these thoughts
with my wife, but it took many months for the truth of my words to sink
in to both of us. We weren’t “living” in any real
sense; we were existing. Worse, we were not in control of our lives,
but existed at the whim of the executives controlling my firm. After
much talk, we sold our condo and car, moved to rural Kentucky, and bought
an old house with some land. It was a major transition for us, especially
since we didn’t know a soul there, but the lifestyle quickly grew
on us. The most surreal thing about our new life was the absence of
stress about finances, job security, noise, crime, etc. I daresay, we
had unwittingly found paradise. While we never thought about having
children when we lived in Manhattan, somehow, living in the country
made childrearing seem like the most natural thing in the world, and
it wasn’t long after we moved to that paradise that Anna became
pregnant with our first child.
Today we largely support
ourselves. We produce much of our own food. My talent is in great demand.
I currently have orders for half a dozen pieces of furniture from my
neighbors, all in exchange for products of their labor. I no longer
have any fear about my job security.
Moreover, we’ve shunned
much of the materialism we once regarded as essential to living. We
don’t subscribe to cable television; our television is used only
for watching movies on DVDs which we share amongst our community. We
got rid of our fancy car and bought an old pickup truck, but we rarely
even drive that because pretty much everything we need is near enough
that we can use our bicycles. We have no technological gadgets, not
even a mobile phone. We have a computer and a dialup Internet connection,
which we use for e-mail and reading news online. Our life is much simpler
than it was, but we are happier. Looking back, it’s surprising
how much stress came from having to acquire and maintain all those gadgets
we thought were so vital. Besides working, we spend a lot of time talking
to each other, visiting with our friendly neighbors, playing cards with
them, and reading books that we also share amongst our community. Even
our limited dependence on our neighbors has reintroduced us to the concept
of tolerance for others’ differences. Anna is now learning to
knit sweaters from one of our neighbors, whom in New York we would have
considered too odd to associate with. And now my brother, who is worried
about his own job security, has decided to move here. We’re looking
for a house for him now, and it will be wonderful to have him and his
wife living near us.
Introduction
Responding to my essay titled
“The
End of Civilization”, some people suggested I should
write about the solutions I referred to in passing. The foregoing fiction
is meant to introduce readers of this essay to what I see as one solution
to the many crises facing humanity and our planet. In a nutshell, my
solution to what ails us and our planet is this: reject consumerism,
globalization, corporatism, and government, and return to localized,
productive, community-oriented, sustainable living. The purpose of this
essay is not to condemn, criticize, or judge anyone, but to get people
to open their minds to the possibility of a different way of living
than what they’ve been taught to pursue. Although I frequently
refer to the United States, much of what I have to say applies to the
whole industrialized world.
Production Versus
Consumption
The United States economy
today largely revolves around consumption. Everywhere one turns in this
country they are bombarded with messages telling them to consume, consume,
consume. One can even see such advertising today on the risers of steps
in subway stations! And we have responded as prodded, consuming to no
end. But are we happy? I don’t think so. In fact, it seems that
the people I’ve known to consume the most are the least happy.
It’s as if their consumerism is a surrogate for happiness.
By contrast, enormous satisfaction
comes from producing something, especially if the product embodies one’s
own special talent or skill or is inspired by one’s own initiative.
This, of course, is the opposite from conditions in the United States
today. Listening to people talk about their jobs, it seems that most
people in this country hate their jobs. Can you blame them? They are
not actually producing anything of value, unless one considers working
as a retail sales clerk, serving food in a restaurant, or riding telephones
on a cube farm to have great value. In order to produce something of
real value, one needs a skill, and possessing such a skill affords one
a sense of self worth and job security. I’ll bet plumbers enjoy
more job satisfaction than stock brokers.
Although people consume and
consume, few, it seems, question whether their consumption is making
them happier, or whether it might actually be making them unhappier.
For example, you buy a mobile phone and it comes with an allotment of
minutes each month and a two-year contract. Now, in order to get the
maximum value out of your purchase, you feel pressure to use your full
allotment of minutes, but at the same time you fear exceeding that allotment
because you’ll get reamed. Later you decide you want to get a
different mobile phone service, but too bad, you’re trapped in
a two-year contract. Mobile phones are certainly convenient, but think
back before we had them. We also didn’t have to worry about receiving
phone calls at unappreciated times, getting work-related calls at home,
remembering to pay another monthly bill, using up our allotted minutes,
or being locked in a contract. Or take that latest trendy gadget you
bought. Did it work perfectly, or did you pull your hair out trying
to get it to work satisfactorily? And how did you feel when, right after
you spent your hard-earned money on that gadget, a better model came
out at a lower price? Six months later, was it sitting dormant on a
shelf in a closet? Might you have been happier if you simply hadn’t
bought it in the first place? Consider that if you had not bought that
gadget, you might have experienced less stress and have more money in
the bank or less debt on your credit card today.
Obviously, we need to consume
some things, such as food, in order to survive. Clothes to wear are
nice too. But needless consumption, either because we’re programmed
by advertising to consume or because we’re searching in vain for
something to make us happy, merely increases our debt and depletes our
planet’s vital resources. If instead of indiscriminately consuming
everything in sight, we consumed only what we really needed, and then
produced ourselves that which we consumed, we’d be a lot happier
and wealthier, and our planet would thank us for it.
Local Versus Global
I’m not suggesting
that we should each manufacture everything we use. What I’m saying
is that we should look to ourselves first; if we cannot provide what
we need, then we should look to our neighbors; then our town; then we
should reconsider if we really need the thing; finally, and only as
a last resort, look outside our local community. Imports should be the
exception, not the norm. Some people might argue that imports result
in cheaper products. This is precisely the problem with our way of life.
Because everything is too cheap we consume and consume. If things cost
more, we’d consume only what we needed, and when we did consume
locally produced products, it would benefit our families and neighbors,
not faceless corporations in faraway lands.
Twice in the last year I’ve
seen in local grocery stores garlic from China for sale! Think about
that for a moment. This tiny bag of garlic, which is being sold for
about one dollar, traveled more than five thousand miles from China
to California. Does that make sense, especially when the town of Gilroy,
California, just four hundred miles away, is a major producer of garlic?
This is an example of what’s so terribly wrong with globalization.
It may well be cheaper in the cold, hard accounting of dollars and cents
to farm garlic in China and ship it all the way to California, but what
about the precious oil consumed and extra pollution generated by shipping
it? What about the jobs lost in the United States? Just because we don’t
have a good way to quantify these costs doesn’t mean that their
cost is zero, that we can simply ignore them. I think most people would
intuitively agree that shipping garlic from China to California makes
no sense. This story about garlic is a trivial example, but multiplied
by thousands of other products being shipped and sold in fantastic volumes
and the problem becomes considerably more serious.
Imagine, on the other hand,
that you exchanged some tomatoes you grew in your yard for garlic that
your next door neighbor grew in his yard. How much more efficient and
sustainable is this hypothetical scenario, compared to the absurd real-life
scenario described above?
One of the greatest tragedies
of modern America is the decimation of its small town “Main Streets”
through globalized competition. It used to be that a small business
owner would set up a business in their local community, the employees
of this business would be family members or neighbors, the profits would
be reinvested in the local community. The prices might have been higher
than those of globalized businesses, but a higher level of service would
have been provided as well. Such businesses fostered community stability
and created a decent standard of living for generation after generation.
Many of the people who once owned their own small businesses in such
small towns now work for the very globalized corporations that helped
put them out of business. In our consumerist frenzy to find the lowest
prices we have unwittingly put ourselves out of business, so to speak.
We could return to the days
where we shopped in local stores, owned by our neighbors, and which
sold locally manufactured goods. We can afford to pay higher prices
to local merchants by shopping more judiciously, by recognizing that
there is intangible value in dealing with someone we know, and by appreciating
the benefits afforded to our communities by such local businesses: community
stability, increased standard of living, educating our young about responsibility.
It’s our choice.
Community Versus
Selfish Isolation
For the last century our
technological innovations have helped increasingly isolate us from one
another. Automobiles have afforded each person a private protective
cocoon, shielding them from having to learn to interact civilly with
others, as one must do on public transit. Video and music players have
permitted people to enjoy movies and music at home instead of having
to be respectful of and courteous to others at the theater. Telephones
and e-mail have made it possible for people to avoid face-to-face communication,
or confrontation, as the case may be. I have to confess that I’m
guilty of excessive reliance on some these modern technologies myself.
I use e-mail extensively, and for years I have preferred to watch movies
at home. In my defense, however, e-mail is more efficient for transmitting
and receiving detailed information, such as work specifications, and
my preference for watching movies at home is due to the exorbitant cost
of movie tickets compared to the low price of DVDs, not to mention the
barrage of advertisements I’m forced to suffer in the movie theater.
I would, however, happily give up these technologies in exchange for
being a member of a real community.
These technologies have insidiously
undermined our sense of community, without which there can be no tolerance,
empathy, sharing, or charity. Indeed, for the last century what we have
seen in our society is a gradual erosion of these traits of civil society.
Instead of making “community” our personal responsibility,
we’ve “outsourced” it to the government, relying on
government to establish and enforce our moral boundaries, negotiate
and mediate our relationships, and provide support to those members
of society who need help. But can government really do as good a job
at these things as a genuine community comprised of compassionate and
engaged people?
Communities come in may forms.
Some are geographical – that’s what most people think of
when they think of the word “community” – and some
are abstract, such as the “gay community” (I’m still
trying to figure out what this is, by the way, as well as what is this
“gay agenda” I keep hearing about). But the essential characteristic
of a community is that it’s a group of people who voluntarily
choose to associate with one another and work together, whether as a
town, a neighborhood, a multi-generational family, or a hippie commune.
Human beings are social creatures. We should want to associate with
each other, and we are more productive and strong when we work together.
That so many of us, myself included, elect to isolate ourselves is a
symptom of the toxic and unhealthy social environment that we live in
today. I blame this toxicity on our lazily substituting government,
corporations, and consumerism for actual community, which takes hard
work and a willingness to compromise to maintain.
Should we choose to return
to a genuine community-oriented way of life, I think we’d all
be a lot happier. In order for this to work, however, we also need to
be willing to be more tolerant of each other, especially those of us
who are the most different; it’s easy to tolerate those who are
like you. Not only does diversity make life, particularly our social
life, more interesting, but an outgrowth of tolerance is peace and harmony,
something we desperately need today.
People Versus Government
and Corporations
Governments and corporations
seek only to dominate, control, and exploit people. Governments do it
for power, while corporations do it for profit. Either because of forethought
or spontaneous discovery, governments and corporations have for a century-and-a-half
been wed in a symbiotic relationship that serves the principal goals
of each, at the expense of people and the environment. It could be said
that governments and corporations are the antithesis of life.
Today the governments of
several of the world’s most industrialized countries are running
amok, terrorizing their citizens, trampling their rights, seemingly
desperate in their pursuit of power. As our own tolerance for each other
has diminished, government has happily assumed the role of brutal enforcer
in our “zero tolerance” society.
Similarly, corporations are
engaged in a free-for-all exploitation of the planet and its people,
aided and abetted by governments, for the profit of a few corporate
executives and wealthy shareholders, and most seriously, without any
regard to the future of our world. The problem with corporations today
is that they no longer seem to have any restraint. The attitude seems
to be not just that “greed is good,” but that if they aren’t
as rapacious as they can possibly be, then one of their competitors
will be. It’s almost as if corporations are in a war with one
another to see which can be the more exploitative.
What can we do about this
state of affairs? I really don’t know. Governments and corporations
hold all the cards today. For now, though, we still own our own minds.
The first step in restoring the preeminence of life over government
and corporations is to recognize how much they control us. As I alluded
in the preface above, when we buy into the “American Dream,”
we actually become subservient to the government and corporations. We
don’t need a fancy house, a fancy car, or a mobile phone with
a built-in camera and Internet access to be happy. Sometimes, less is
actually more.
Once we recognize that we’re
being programmed to behave in ways that benefit governments and corporations,
to the detriment of our very selves, and honestly address the question
of what would truly make us happy, maybe then we can start taking steps
in the right direction. Timothy Leary once said, “turn on, tune
in, drop out.” This maxim is amazingly relevant today, and is
the first step toward a healthier tomorrow.
Even if you are not willing
to “drop out,” or live “off the grid,” simply
examining how much governments and corporations control your daily existence
will be instructive. For example, how much time do you spend in any
given day complying with government rules or dealing with corporations?
Just yesterday I spent about three hours preparing my income taxes,
on top of the ten hours I had previously invested in that task. I also
had to obtain a loan from a corporation to pay my income taxes to the
government (Alas, I poorly managed my finances last year). And, in the
past week I’ve had to pay bills to six different corporations.
In light of all that utterly unproductive effort, I ought to be asking
myself if what I’m getting in return is worth the effort.
It would be nice if we could
“opt-out” of supporting the government through paying taxes.
Unfortunately, the government is probably not going to go along with
that idea. But we can look for legal ways to reduce our taxes. For example,
by living a simpler lifestyle and augmenting our income by growing our
own food, we can take a job that pays less and thereby pay less tax,
while increasing our independence and sense of self-efficacy. Bartering
with your neighbors is a good way to avoid taxes too, as there are no
practical means for the government to tax bartering. Sharing things
with your neighbors, besides fostering a sense of community, reduces
spending and hence, sales taxes.
“Participation”
in the political process through voting is a facade. Not only are some
elections in the United States blatantly rigged today, but it really
doesn’t matter who you elect to office anyway. Once in office,
a politician is beholden to those who pay his or her campaign bills,
which are primarily corporations and their lobbyists, and they are always
working behind the scenes, pushing their agendas, not just on election
day. Thus, regardless of what platform a candidate runs on, once in
office, their platform quietly shifts to that which best serves their
corporate sponsors. It’s a waste of time to vote. People who vote
are consoling themselves with a false sense of participation, when in
fact, their votes are irrelevant. If you want to participate in the
political process, then give money to organizations that will lobby
continuously on your behalf. Recognizing this reality of American politics,
I stopped voting a decade-and-a-half ago and have since given money
to organizations, such as Greenpeace, the NRDC, the NRA and the ACLU,
to lobby on my behalf. Not playing the government’s election game
is wonderfully liberating. Perhaps if enough people stopped “participating”
in the political system, the mere lack of participants would send the
loudest message of all.
I used to ridicule home schooling
as quackery or paranoid anti-government posturing. Today I’m an
ardent fan of home schooling. Besides the now obvious failure of public
schools to actually educate students – the United States is nearly
last among industrialized countries – it’s clear to me now
that public schools are increasingly used as a vehicle for inculcating
in young minds conformity, as well as devotion and obedience to the
state. If I were to have children, I would absolutely school them at
home. In fact, collective home schooling of several neighborhood children
would be a great example of a community working together. As an interesting
aside, governments seem to be waking up to the threat posed by free-thinking
graduates of home schools, and are now starting to impose oppressive
regulations on home schoolers, apparently with the hope of driving them
out of “business.”
As for rejecting corporate
influence from your life, it’s easy: simply don’t give them
your money. Before spending money, ask yourself if you really need the
thing or service you’re contemplating buying. When you do spend
your money, spend it at local businesses as much as possible. In cases
where you are forced to give your money to corporations – such
as by laws requiring you to buy automobile insurance – then find
a way to minimize the amount of money you give them. Buy a cheap car
for which you can skip the comprehensive and collision coverage.
Sustainable Versus
Unsustainable
Throughout time and place,
indigenous people have usually developed the wisdom to live in harmony
with their world. Most likely this wisdom ensued from their observation
over a long period of time that communities that failed to live within
their means perished. Our world today is much bigger than the confining
worlds that indigenous people lived in long ago. Thanks to globalization,
today it’s possible to create the illusion of limitless bounty.
If we live beyond our means in America, we can simply import more resources
from elsewhere on the globe, and never mind the impact outside our borders.
Out of sight, out of mind. We live here in blissful ignorance.
Few people are aware when
they buy a neat technological gadget, that toxins from the factory in
China that manufactured that gadget pollute the river that the local
people get their drinking water from. Rural people in China are suffering
more and more to fuel our consumptive way of life. Yet because we don’t
see these costs, we don’t realize that our way of life is not
sustainable. One of the benefits of a localized economy, versus a globalized
economy, is that it’s far easier for people to do a cost-benefit
analysis of their systems of production.
Of course, in so many ways
our exploitation of our environment is unsustainable. We are obviously
overly dependent on fossil fuels, which are rapidly being depleted and
which produce a lot of pollution. We can reduce our consumption of fossil
fuels by traveling and transporting less, which implies more localized
living, working, and production. Consuming fewer manufactured goods
also reduces consumption of fossil fuels. Our oceans are dying from
pollution, but mainly from overfishing. Fishing methods, such as rapaciously
destructive bottom trawling and the use of indiscriminately lethal drift
nets are killing the oceans. While such efficient fishing methods may
make a corporate accountant’s heart jump with joy, how long will
it be before the oceans are devoid of life? People have to eat, but
they need to do so in a way that can be sustained. We burn down Amazon
rain forests to make way for cattle ranches so that fast food restaurants
can manufacture cheap, toxic burgers. What if we obtained beef from
a local farmer instead and ground it ourselves to make burgers? Would
that not be cheaper overall, more healthful, and more sustainable? Would
that not benefit our local community? Would that not have a less adverse
impact on our planet?
If we grew produce in backyard
gardens instead of importing it from abroad, it would obviously be far
more efficient energy-wise because we would not have to ship that produce
all over the world, nor even make trips in the car to buy it. What’s
more, grown without pesticides, such produce would be more healthful.
It would be tastier and probably more nutritious, as well. By recycling
organic waste in a compost pile and combining it with waste from small
animals, such as chickens, we can create a perpetually sustainable ecosystem
in our own backyards. Replicating this model over the entire planet
would substantially improve our harmony with our world, and go a long
way toward making our existence sustainable.
Summary
I hope the foregoing essay
has slightly stimulated the imagination of some readers. Obviously,
my point of view is biased by my negative view of government and corporations.
I didn’t always harbor such negative biases, but over time I have
seen the light.
Do I practice what I preach?
Well, I’m working on it. Being a product of the very world I inveigh
against, it’s hard for me to simply change overnight, but I am
working on it. I am self employed as a craftsman of sorts: I make a
comfortable living at home as a computer programmer writing software
for a local company that manufactures air pollution monitoring equipment.
I do own a house in rural Kentucky and I plan to set up a backyard garden
and try to become as self sufficient as possible. I’m always looking
for ways to minimize my impact on the environment (see http://dave.eriqat.name/DE_Environmentalism.html
for my tips). I do minimize my association with government and corporations
to the extent possible. I do try to shop at local businesses instead
of stores belonging to globalized corporations. I do have a mobile phone,
but it has no camera or Internet access, it’s a prepaid phone
which I bought for emergencies, I hardly ever use it, and I would not
miss it if I got rid of it. And I do shun consumerism, except for my
fondness for DVDs, but as I said, I could live without even those.
What about people in far
off places, such as Africa? What can be done to help them survive? I
don’t know. I don’t have all the answers. Perhaps if we
just quit meddling in the affairs of such people and magnanimously assisted
them when they asked for assistance, they could figure out their own
solutions.
Dave Eriqat can be reached
at [email protected]
Copyright 2006 by Dave Eriqat