What is That Thing in Your Yard?

After months of wrestling with the County Building Department about permits and codes, excruciating financial gymnastics and down and dirty back-breaking spadework, we finally got our solar installation up. It’s a massive 3 kw (stc) photovoltaic pole mount. We feel like we created the best of two worlds, too, since we live way back in the woods while, at the same time, are generating a lot of electricity. We inscribed a Sun Mantra, OM Suryaya Namaha, around the base of the installation, honoring the Sun as the principal of light, life and love. In Vedic Philosophy, the Sun represents the soul—the causal body or reincarnating entity, as well as the mind of clarity and illumination. 

 As Charles Eisenstein, in Sacred Economics, points out, he is "not surprised that ancient people worshiped the sun, the only thing we know that gives without expectation or even possibility of return. The sun is generosity manifest." He goes on, a bit later, to say that "solar energy is the light of earthly love reflected back at us". So, it goes without saying that we think our solar array is beautiful. It’s a piece of architectural artwork; it’s practical spirituality; it’s earthly love reflected back at us! We have learned that this, however, is not a popularly held viewpoint. Comments have ranged from "what is that monstrosity in your back yard?" to "I wouldn’t put something like that on my property!". Oh, there was also the woman who asked if we were "expecting an alien landing". Good grief. These comments, mind you, all came from people who wouldn’t think twice if there were a couple of junk cars sitting out there, or maybe even a garish TV satellite receiver. If we had stashed an old washer or dryer on the back porch or had a couple of broken-down snowmobiles in the shed, they’d walk right by them, too, and never bat an eyelash. But, some solar panels? No way! 

 Take, for example, the town of Warwick, in southern Orange County. They were the first community in the US to install solar panels on their Town Hall, install an electric car charging station near their farmers' market and attract an LEED-certified supermarket. While this all sounds good to me, the town is now contending with the complaints of people who do not like the idea of solar panels on downtown village homes. John Hicks, the town attorney and former Orange County Republican chairman whose wife sent in a letter of complaint regarding the solar installations, said he and his wife support energy efficiency but oppose the installation of solar panels on historic downtown homes "because basically solar panels are pretty ugly." And, Warwick isn’t the only place where solar panels are under assault. Residents and politicians in Ridgewood, Wyckoff, and several other posh suburban towns just outside New York City are attacking local utility company PSE&G for putting up solar panels. Specifically, in an attempt to double the Garden State’s solar capacity, the company has been installing 3-foot-by-5-foot solar modules on utility poles. And the reactions are less than positive: “It’s just horrible,” said Ridgewood’s Deputy Mayor Tom Riche, according to an article in The Record, of Bergen County, N.J. 

 

Aren’t we really addressing an age-old philosophical question about what constitutes beauty? Or fashion? For example, no self-respecting chic woman of the 21st century would be caught dead in a fitted bodice with gathers and padded shoulders. But, if this were 1942, she’d be sizzling. And, I’ll bet nobody thought that all of those electric lines that got hung in the early 1900’s were ugly. Probably not: they were too excited about exchanging their oil lamps for light bulbs. If we’re really talking about aesthetics, a nicely trimmed oil lamp is way prettier than a light switch. But, electric lights were a step forward. They lessened the chance of a house fire, didn’t emit fumes and put off way more light. So, nobody complained. Well, it’s kind of the same with solar panels. They are a step forward. Solar power is renewable and non-polluting. And, after the initial investment, all of the electricity produced is free. 

As a culture, we’re just not used to looking at them yet. But, give us a decade or so, and they’ll be like those electric wires that are strung all over the place—we will hardly even notice them. And, when we do, we’ll recognize that they are beautiful. They’re beautiful because they are renewable and non-polluting. And, because they are a step forward. Their beauty is grounded in their contribution to sustainable futures. They are an icon to something that we are giving to—instead of taking away from—subsequent generations. They are not a fashion statement: they’re an evolutionary statement. They are monuments to the awakening of our species. OM Suryaya Namaha.

Philosophical Musings on the Juxtaposition of the Words "Commercial" and "Food"

So, how did it happen? How did we all get complacent enough to accept the phrase "commercially produced food" without even blinking an eye? How did Uncle Sam go from advising the US public "to garden" to later telling the US public "to shop". And, not just to shop, but to shop for food.

Food is the hub of the wheel. It's the one thing that we all have in common: we all have to eat. And, we are what we eat. Recent statistics regarding the number of people with early onset cancer, degenerative disease, diabetes and dementia all point to a decline in the quality of our food. "Commercial" anything is about profit, not quality. So, when food becomes a profit motive, a lot goes out the door.

Some of the things that fly out the door are health, money (yours, not theirs), environment and energy. Big Agriculture is unconcerned about the environmental carnage left behind by pesticides, GMO crops, soil depletion or erosion.Big Agriculture is unconcerned about how much fuel it takes to run those mega-machines to produce, harvest and transport crops. And, Big Agriculture doesn't care how much food costs you and your family. They care about directing profits to already rich corporate interests.

Most of the food in your supermarket travels thousands of miles in trucks or planes to get from the farm to the shelves. Think about how much fuel us used to transport those items. What kind of impact does that have on the environment? When you purchase food at the store, you’re also paying for the cost of shipping, packaging and storing that food. What kind of impact does that have on your wallet?

While organic foods have grown in popularity, many commercially available foods are still sprayed with pesticides, herbicides and preservative formulas to prevent disease and spoilage. The USDA currently allows "57 trace pesticides" in foods labeled organic. Are you scared (or angry) yet? Not only can these chemicals pose health risks to you, they also impact the environment through air and water pollution.

The concept of "commercial food" really gets at the heart of the differential identified by Scott Nearing. Nearing made a clear distinction between "use production" and "market production". Use production is when you produce something (in this case, food) for your own household's use. Market production, obviously, is producing for sale on the open market. Nearing argued, and I agree, the "use production" was, in the Big Picture, the most efficient and effective economic model.

By growing and preserving your own food, for example, you’ll save money. Food grown from seed costs a lot less than store-bought. By preserving your harvest you can reduce the amount of food you throw away due to spoilage. There is no packaging. There are no middle managers. In addition, you can save the seeds from the fruits of your plants and replant them next year. By following these practices you could feed yourself indefinitely.

Food that you grow yourself just tastes better. Food in markets, even health food stores, is often in cold storage for up to a month before being sold. Fresh food is more nutritious and has better flavor than the stuff that comes from the store.

I grow my own food. I "get my groceries off the ground". When I walk through my garden and cut fresh greens for salad--and eat them no more than an hour later--the benefits of Nearing's "use economy" are evident. Nothing, absolutely nothing, that I can buy at a market (even a Farmer's Market) comes close to the level of quality that I can produce right outside my window.

It's my vision that more and more people will wave goodbye to "commercial food" and replace it with a "use economy" model. If Uncle Sam won't tell us to GARDEN anymore, we'll just do it ourselves!

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.

Unplugging from The Man, Part 1

In the words of T.S. Elliot, “so how should I presume” to draw a line in the sand? There are, actually, as many ways as there are grains of sand, but the way that seems most accessible to me is Unplugging from The Man. Scott Nearing put it succinctly when he wrote that he “must reduce wants and even needs to a minimum; wherever possible, serve myself, raise and prepare my own food, wash my own clothing, do my own building and repairing, maintain the best of health to avoid the heavy costs involved in sickness, keep down such fixed costs as rent, interest and taxes; never borrow and take on interest slavery, but always pay cash; build up a capital reserve sufficient to cover a full year of unemployment, and be prepared for emergencies.” (The Making of a Radical, p. 44) Nearing was a strong advocate of Unplugging from The Man, which he referred to as The Establishment.

People can unplug, or not, according to their individual comfort levels. There are dozens of ways to pull the plug. We can all do it differently and still make a collective impact. And, we can do it incrementally and progressively as we get more comfortable with new lifestyle behaviors. There's no point in expecting The Man to change. It's not going to happen. The corrupt system works for him. He's getting richer and fatter. So, we have to find a way to wave goodbye to The Man who has never paid more than lip service to any one of our attempts to "pursue life, liberty and happiness." This is secession in its rawest, most potent form.

This blogpost is the first in a series (hence, the Pt. 1 notation) about Unplugging from the Man. Throughout the series, I am going to write both theoretically and practically--very, very practically--about how to systematically Unplug from The Man. I began unplugging in 1974 and am still discovering deeper, more wide-spectrum ways to pull the plug. The more I unplug, the more I find myself, in the words of Joanna Macy and Molly Young Brown, Coming Back to Life. I don’t feel as if I have given anything up. I feel, conversely, as if I am liberated from things that I really never needed in the first place.

Let's start with some of the theoretical considerations. Heidegger’s big idea was that most people get so lost in das Man (The Man) that they never engage in real discourse, being content, instead, with idle chatter—groundless, buzzing pop-talk that focuses on reaching a superficial consensus instead of exploring anything new. They never really examine their lives and, consequently, they don't know themselves. Totally exteriorized, they are easy to enculturate, to condition and to propagandize. It's easy for The Man to keep them subdued in the golden handcuffs of convenience, comfort and consumer goods.

But, one day the handcuffs start to feel tight. They might even chafe their wrists. Their bubble-priced home is suddenly under-water, the warranty wears off their new SUV, their paycheck can't keep pace with rising food and fuel prices, they get furloughed and their kids can't afford college. Most wonder if this is The American Dream? A few realize that they've been lied to while The Man has laughed all the way to the bank.

Jean Gebser’s seminal work, Ever-Present Origin, posits a map of psycho-history in theorizing that we are currently in a period that Gebser calls the Mental-Rational Period. It is a period that represents the culmination of the development of the human ego. Gebser further theorizes that, used in its negative sense (ie, acquisition, superficiality and separateness), the ego will lead to complete collapse of civilization. The only way that humanity, in his view, can move forward from Empire to Earth Community (to borrow David Korten’s words) is through reaching back into earlier structures of consciousness-- which Gebser calls the Magical and Mythic--and reintegrating their practices and lifestyle patterns. I agree. Because those very practices and lifestyle patterns offer us a tried and true blueprint for Unplugging from The Man! Let's get started!

The people of the Magical period were nomadic. They ‘got their groceries off the ground’ through gathering. We can reintegrate this practice through WILDCRAFTING. One of the most disturbing and extraordinary aspects of life in the US is the persistence of hunger. The U.S. Department of Agriculture reported that food insecurity was accelerating even prior to the recession: the number of people reported in 2008 was more than double the number in 2000.

As the recession has deepened, there are too many families surviving predominantly on refined carbohydrates such as bread, pasta, and macaroni because these products are less expensive, as a result of being subsidized by the government. In 2005, the government spent $17 billion subsidizing grain farmers. Rather than focusing on the production of fruits and vegetables, more than half of US subsidies go to grain farmers.

And yet we know that fruits and vegetables—especially leafy greens—are nutritional powerhouses. Dark green leafy vegetables are, calorie for calorie, perhaps the most concentrated source of nutrition of any food. It was common for our ancient hunter-gatherer ancestors to eat up to six pounds of leaves per day. Imagine them walking along from one place to another, just picking and eating greens as they went—a veritable bonanza of vitamins, minerals, and phytonutrients.

Contemporary wildcrafting offers us the same opportunity. Wildcrafting is the practice of harvesting edible plants from their natural, or "wild" habitats. It means, literally, discovering that the woods and fields are a table always spread. It’s seeing the world as a garden. I will be wildcrafting by mid-April and, as the days grow longer and warmer, I will be able to harvest up to 15 types of wild green edibles each afternoon in my own backyard. While waiting for the cultivated greens in my garden to mature, I will already have been making huge, dark green salads from my wildcrafted veggies.

America’s hunger problem could be reduced if people were taught the ancient art of wildcrafting. Families could find food—and lots of it--right in their backyards! Further, if municipalities were encouraged to stop using chemically toxic sprays on parks and roadsides, wild foods could also be harvested there. And, we could pull the plug on The Man. We wouldn’t need to buy commercially produced (often by huge multi-national corporations) leafy greens that have been transported thousands of miles.

It is anomalous. We are in the midst of one of the worst recessions in American history. Literally millions of people don’t have access to secure food supplies. State and local governments are reeling in debt. Yet, instead of encouraging wildcrafting, we continue to spend millions of tax dollars spraying toxic chemicals on precious wild edibles.

Dandelion, for example, has diuretic properties, which means that it can help the body eliminate extra water. Along with these properties, dandelion is very good at supporting the liver by increasing bile production. I juice the leaves, use them in salads and make a lip-smacking-good dandelion jelly out of the blossoms.

Humans have been eating chickweed and using it medicinally throughout history. Chickweed is very nutritious and can be eaten raw or cooked. The younger leaves are great in salads and older parts of the plant can be cooked like spinach (without the risk of e coli infections from CAFO run-offs).

During Fall foliage season, wild fruits abound, as do berries and nuts. There is really nothing finer than cracking wild walnuts by a cozy Autumn woodfire, while feasting on a wild apple pie—unless, of course, it’s a bowl of wild plums! Unplugging from The Man does not result in austerity. It results in simple prosperity. It is personal freedom. To become unplugged is to become free. Each thing that we can do to cut ties with The Man and its established order creates more freedom. This really is secession in its rawest and most potent form.

Note: This blogpost is the first in a series about Unplugging from the Man. Stay tuned for subsequent posts which will offer more suggestions and practical ideas about achieving personal freedom through Unplugging.

Drawing a Line in the Sand

Where do we draw the line in the sand? Where do we say, "enough is enough"? At what point do we stop simply signing petitions and, instead, start fighting back against a culture that is killing us all? Egypt has set an example. Wisconsin has, too.

In his 2006 book, Endgame, Derrick Jensen reminds us that if we are "propping up industrialized civilization", we are ipso facto promoting violence. He further reminds us that "Civilization is not redeemable. This culture will not undergo any sort of voluntary transformation to a sane and sustainable way of living. If we do not put a halt to it, civilization will continue to eviscerate the vast majority of humans and to degrade the planet until it (civilization, and probably the planet) collapses."

Jensen's not a lone wolf. There are plenty of people saying this. And, it's not even a particularly recent theme. Herbert Marcuse, for example, sang the same song in the late 1960's in An Essay on Liberation when he argued that traditional conceptions of human freedom have been rendered obsolete by the development of advanced industrial society. Marcuse closes the essay by saying that "the construction of a free society would create new incentives for work." He clarifies that "in exploitive societies, the so-called work instinct is mainly the introjected necessity to perform productively in order to earn a living." The One Dimensional Man.

The wheels are coming off of the wagon. Trying to keep putting them back on is like sticking our fingers in a hole in the dike: an unsustainable, "little picture" attempt to "solve" the problem. It's time to draw a line in the sand. It's time to realize that there really isn't any "fixing" the corporate whore that we call "the government". As Marcuse wrote, "The Great Refusal takes a variety of forms."