Unplugging from The Man, Part 5

As we get deeper into Unplugging from the Man, we invariably come face-to-face with our addiction to petroleum. Sure, we like to sit around and do the "ain't it awful" with our peers, but we keep using gasoline. Classic addiction: I'll stop tomorrow. And, tomorrow never comes.

So, what's the solution? Stop pumping!! It's that simple.

The average American household spends $385./month on gasoline. That is almost $100./week. Even with the recent surge in gas prices, consumption has only reduced by 0.7%. We all know that we are past peak oil. We all know that our three wars are contingent upon our lust for oil. Yet, our societal behavioral changes seem to lag behind our knowledge. We are suffering from cultural cognitive dissonance.

Let's look at some practical things that we could do, easily, to stop pumping and start Unplugging:

(1) Bicycle: Get a bicycle, equip it with a basket for carrying groceries. You'll be getting heart-healthy at the same time you stop stressing about escalating gas prices. You'll slow down. You'll notice more things along your route. And, you will no longer be held captive by the oil barons. Bicycling is good for the Planet, good for your health and good for saving money.

We all think that we don't have time to bicycle places. It's just a head trip. Recently, my partner needed a large bunch of mint to put in his recipe for the evening meal. So, I hopped on my bicycle and went a couple of miles down the road to a large pond, where both peppermint and spearmint grow abundantly along the south shores. Within a few minutes, I had filled my bike basket and was peddling back home, enjoying the fragrance of fresh cut mints. My more conventional neighbors asked me, “How do you find the time to do these things?” Let’s take a look at this, though, for a minute. I can bicycle eight miles per hour even on a bad day. That puts my transportation time at roughly fifteen minutes. The actual wildcrafting takes about ten minutes, including the time spent watching some ducklings learning to bob for fish, bringing my total time investment to about twenty-five minutes. This is roughly ten minutes less than it would be to drive into town and go to the market. There are no hidden time costs such as parking, waiting in a checkout line, or having to go to a second store because the first one didn’t have it. My mints were super fresh, didn’t require any packaging or gasoline use, and didn’t create any auto emissions. So, we do have time to bicycle places!

(2) Ride Share: How hard would it be to share rides with others? Sure, it involves some planning, but that's about it. Planning means that you will be talking with your neighbors and colleagues. And, what's so bad about that? Wouldn't that be community? Have you ever gone to your son or dauther's sporting event and noticed that all of your neighbors are there, too--and that you all fired up your own, individual gas guzzling machines to drive down there?

Commuting just 15 miles each way to work can cost as much as $ 2,264 per year at current gas prices. Sharing the ride with just one other person can cut your commuting costs in half. Think of all of the more interesting things that you could do with that extra thousand dollars!

(3) Consolidate Errands: Again, a little planning can go a long ways. Instead of firing up your rig to run into town and back every day of the week, designate one day as "errand day". Train yourself to get sufficiently organized to do everything that you need to do in a single trip to town: groceries, errands, meetings and appointments. Make lists. Work around already existing commitments. If, for example, you have a weekly Wednesday afternoon appointment or meeting, go into town a little earlier on Wednesdays and also do your shopping and errands.

We are so incredibly used to instant gratification that this will make us uneasy for awhile. We are used to running into town to pick up a single lag bolt, right? Or, a bottle of olive oil? Once, though, the savings start to show up in the household budget, we'll be really excited about the whole list-making and planning process! There is real money (and time) to be saved here.

(4) Walk, Ski, Snowshoe: You will be surprised how fit you will get in a very short time by making this lifestyle change. When you feel like a trip to town just to "get a java" at the local coffee shop, ski in. Walk. Snowshoe. Or, bike. It makes the outing even more fun than it would have originally have been. Maybe you could invite a friend to share the foot-transport with you.

Of course, we keep pumping because we think, erroneously, that we "don't have time" for alternative forms of transportation. But, why are people in the most technologically advanced civilization in the world starved for time? One of the hooks that keep people locked into the consumer culture is the lure of convenience. We are told that convenience frees up time. This looks good on paper, but when inspected more closely, it doesn’t quite ring true.

Convenience does, superficially, create more time. But those conveniences are expensive and, in the long run, require people to work more hours to make more income to pay for them. In other words, people end up working more hours—thereby having less available time—to make enough money to pay for convenience. The final product of convenience is time famine. There’s something wrong with this picture.

Harvard economist Juliet Schor, in The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure, argues from statistics what I have figured out from experience. According to Schor, American’s work increases by one day each year. Averaging only sixteen hours of leisure a week after jobs and associated travel and communication responsibilities, working hours are longer than they were forty years ago. This, in large part, traces back to our addiction to gasoline. It strikes me that by dealing with our gasoline addiction--which is really a "convenience addiction"--we will be freed up to enjoy more leisure. And, that's a pretty nice perk for Unplugging from the Man.

Author’s Note: This blogpost was the fifth in a series of articles about Unplugging from the Man. Stay tuned for more suggestions and ideas about achieving personal freedom.

Unplugging from The Man, Part 4

So, we've made up our minds to Unplug from The Man. We want to loosen the noose and pursue personal freedom. Our wrists are chafed from the golden handcuffs and it's time to shake them off. We are in Transition and we need to continue to hammer out our blueprint for liberation. In Part 3 of this series, I put forward some good preliminary ideas for starting to Unplug. But now, in this Part, let's go deeper:

* Get rid of your TV. It has to go. It's that simple. The TV keeps you shackled to the Establishment. It programs you as to what to buy, what to think and what to say. It's subtle, but it's there: the hidden agenda. TV watchers stop thinking for themselves. A slow, incremental exteriorization happens. The advertisements get to even the most vigilant. It is subliminal and insidious. Don't tell me, either, that "there are a lot of good programs on TV". For every "good one", there are a dozen "bad ones". You are just rationalizing. Take a deep breath and pull the plug.

* Park your car. Get a bicycle, equip it with a basket for carrying groceries and you've got your Transition transportation. You'll be getting heart-healthy at the same time you stop stressing about escalating gas prices. You'll slow down. You'll notice more things along your route. And, you will no longer be held captive by the oil barons. Bicycling is good for the Planet, good for your health and good for saving money. Freedom!

* Say goodbye to your phone. You read that right. Get rid of your landline. Nobody needs one anymore. And, nobody really needs a smart phone, either. Sure, they're fun, but they're also expensive (not to mention that they track your whereabout and, starting in 2012, will issue daily "terror alerts" from the White House. Seriously.) Try Google Phone for a pleasant--free!--surprise! You can get your own number. It has voicemail, caller ID and call forwarding. And, all calls within the US are free.

* Support alternative news. The US is currently among the most propagandized nations in the world. The commercial, corporate news sites don't really report "news" anymore. It's, instead, a steady stream of ideology funded by vested special interests. The independent, alternative news sites are the only operative venues of real, uncensored information. Support them! Let's not let them die from malnutrition. Without them, we will be proverbial sheep.

Unplugging from The Man is an essential component of our own personal versions of Power Shift 2011. It's going to mean adjusting to some changes, but the sweet taste of freedom is worth it!

Author’s Note: This blogpost was the fourth in a series of articles about Unplugging from the Man. Stay tuned for more suggestions and ideas about achieving personal freedom.

Unplugging from The Man, Part 3

Marcuse called it choosing not to participate in one-dimensional society. I'm calling it Unplugging from the Man. No difference. It's getting free. Seeking liberation from a system that is choking the life-blood out of our humanness. Once we've made up our minds to Unplug, we need to map out a blueprint for doing it. There's a lot to do and we can only do a bit at a time. So, jump in wherever works best for you--but keep at it. Keep Unplugging one step at a time until you start to feel free. Fewer bills, less rushing around, better health and more happiness!

Let's turn our attention to some super easy places to Unplug that will give you a lot of bang for your buck. Let's look at doing things at home (wave goodbye to commercial culture) and by hand (wave goodbye to industrial culture):

(1) Cooking. Marcuse, in his Essay on Liberation, says that if our lives were more aligned with The Beautiful (and I would say, therefore, Good Lives!), that art would recapture some of its more primitive "technical" connations such as the "art of preparing food". Cooking at home turns an otherwise sterile kitchen into the living heart of a home. The smell of a fresh pie, the sound of a stirfry, the sight of a quiche fresh from the oven all spell connectedness. It is the sensory experience of community. Stories are told, news is shared, gossip is swapped. We are a part of something bigger than ourselves. Homecooked food is more nutritional, more cost-effective, creates less waste and builds community. Dinner anyone?

(2) Cultivating. And, so much the better if the food that you are preparing was grown right outside your kitchen window. Take out your lawn and put in a vegetable garden! I have just returned from a tiny town in rural Portugal where there wasn't a lawn in sight. Instead, every single yard was full of lemon trees, orange trees, vegetable gardens and potato patches. The edible yards were really beautiful--alive with color and interesting layouts. Families were outside tending their gardens together to the tune of laughter.

(3) Crafting. Why don't you start with making some of your own clothes. You can go uber-creative and make "wearable art". Or, you can mix old and new school by knitting/crocheting some really unique, one-of-a-kind gladrags. This winter I cranked out a new pair of wool socks, a silk hat, an alpaca sweater and I'm halfway through a long crochetted cape. Good looking stuff, handmade by the fire with friends and family doing their thing nearby. And, once you're handy with a needle and thread, you can mend your existing clothing really quickly, also extending its useful life.

(4) Power Down. Have you tried turning off the lights for a night? Fabulous! How about designating one or two nights a week as no-lights nights, using only candles and/or olive oil lamps. It's romantic. It's beautiful. And, you'll find yourself shifting into a much more relaxed evening protocol. I often play my harpsichord with blazing candles on both sides of my sheet music. Baroque music, played with the feel of the baroque period! Once you get used to going without lights every now and then, you'll find yourself discovering other electrical appliances and/or devices that you, frankly, just don't really need. Things that you previously considered "necessities" will seem extraneous.

(4) Freecycle. So, then you can give them away! My area has an online forum of "stuff" that people want to give away. No strings attached--just given freely to others. I list "stuff" on there periodically and have made some really great connections with people here in my area. It makes me feel really good to watch someone get something - for free! - that they really needed and weren't in a good position to buy.

(5) Live! Finally, find more ways to actually inhabit your home. You own it. Live there! Some people own their houses, but are hardly ever home. Find ways to spend more and more time in your own castle. Enjoy it. Invite people over. Cook together. Cultivate together. Craft together. Power Down together (it's fun to have people over on no-lights night! How about a cozy little candlelight dinner party?). And, swap "stuff". Become co-heirs in freedom: the rawest form of succession. Liberated. Unplugged.

Author’s Note: This blogpost was the third in a series of articles about Unplugging from the Man. Stay tuned for more suggestions and ideas about achieving personal freedom.

Unplugging from The Man, Part 2

One of the things that we need to do in order to Unplug is change our thinking. This is huge: much bigger than most people realize. Most people, in fact, have no real idea what they are thinking. They are on remote control, auto-pilot, creatures of habituated behavior that hasn't been examined in decades. Like Pavlov's dogs, they are fully conditioned robots.

Unplugging begins in the head. We have to mentally Unplug before we can physically Unplug. I'm talking about making conscious decisions to change deeply entrenched patterns of behavior. Let's look at a couple of examples:

Every time that people run out of an item, they automatically assume that "they need another one" and put it on the shopping list. The same is true of things that get broken, lost or worn-out. The meme is that everything has to be replaced: always, forever. This is simply not true. We already have enough "stuff" in our garages, attics, cellars and storage sheds to patch-in for anything that really needs to be replaced. The first question, though, is: "do we really even need this item?" Chances are, we don't. Chances are, we already own a dozen other items that can do the same task. Next step: use one of those.

If, however, the answer is that we really do need the item, the next question becomes, "do we have anything with which to 'make do' in place of this item?" My Grandmother, a feisty Vermonter, was the Master of Making-Do. I thought of her the other day when I needed a small embroidery hoop. Mine had gone missing and was nowhere to be found--and I certainly wasn't about to buy another one. How could I 'make do'? What would my Grandmother have done? After a bit of thrashing around, I seized upon the idea of using the ring from a lid of a wide-mouth canning jar and a rubber band. 'Worked just fine!

But to pull this off, we have to stop the automatic impulse to "go get it" and, instead, cultivate an impulse to "create it". We have to replace buying with making. After a person switches to this type of thinking, it is not only liberating--it is downright fun! We are the artists of our own lives--lives that truly belong to us, not to The Man. Freedom! The most raw and potent form of secession.

While we are talking about changing our minds, we should look at how we view people. Do we discontinue using our snow-plow guy (even though he's given us 20 years of good, loyal service?) because some new guy will do it "cheaper"? Or, do we let our experienced teachers get laid off and be replaced by inexperienced rookies, because they are "cheaper"? And, do we evict our tenant with whom we have an informal rent-control agreement in order to get a new tenant who can "pay more"? These kinds of things happen every day of the week. People are not widgets! Let me say that again: people are not widgets! There is more to our "business" relationships than business. There is humanness. We are human beings first; landlords, tax payers and property owners second.

Do you remember where your Grandfather worked? Everybody in the shop knew each other--and each other's children. They cared about each other's families. They were community. If someone fell into hard times, they passed the hat. If a neighbor couldn't pay the rent, solutions were found by which s/he could remain in their home and work it out. They guy who plowed the snow was part of the family--he got a big box of cookies for the Holidays and a rag-doll for his child. Sure, people watched their pennies. But, that wasn't all that they watched. They knew that they needed each other and that their community was only as strong as their weakest member.

This is going to require a big shift in the head. Contemporary Americans feel justified in getting "the cheapest"--no matter what the actual cost of the so-called "bargain" is. We have to start looking at the big picture again. Enlightened self-interest needs to replace simply self-interest.

The Man isn't going to help us change our minds. He's doing just fine by keeping us Plugged In. We're going to have to do this on our own. It's going to require some mindfulness training. Noble Simplicity!

Author’s Note: This blogpost was the second in a series of articles about Unplugging from the Man. Stay tuned for more suggestions and ideas about achieving personal freedom.