Small Revolutions: Voluntary Simplicity in Devon

Food Crisis: The Silent Tsunami

I've been meaning to write more about the food crisis, but I've been studying for my massage exams coming up soon, so it's bee a little quite on this front.

The next thing I was going to mention in my exploration of food was something Mahatma Gandhi espoused. He said that people should try to look after themselves. If they could not, then the family should look after them. And if the family cannot look after them, the village should. And if the village couldn't the region should etc.

In short, he espoused self-reliance and autonomy at the most local level possible.

Particularly in the developing world, I believe that developing countries are better off developing their internal economies and their internal level of affluence at the most local level. Because the globalised market is pitted against them.

Take supermarkets sourcing vegetables for example. They don't buy from poor individuals, they buy from large companies that pay lots of workers small wages. The trickle down effect of wealth is negligible particularly if individuals and families, becoming landless through the process of industrialisation - then sink below the level of subsistence because they can no longer grow their own food or forage on common land.

These people would be far better off if they had some land on which they could grow food, and  be able participate in small scale economic activities and production on a local level as part of a local economy, rather than being employed by large companies and the smallest and least powerful units in a massive globalised industrial complex.

Globalisation was supposed to make everyone richer.

My professional insight and analysis of this is this: bollocks. It was designed to leverage open national economies across the world to the clutches of large companies seeking new markets, cheaper labour with fewer human rights, supporting their transnational expansion.

Globalisation was supposed to work because of "comparative advantage theory". In short, we all do what we're best at. On a superficial level, it sounds quite smart. I mean, no-one can be good at everything so it;s good to share jobs out.

That's as may be in a town or a city with people, but on a global level it doesn't work for a number of reasons - prior accumulation of capital and information advantage through colonisation of countries; inequal distribution of world resources (forests, minerals, raw materials); different weather patterns etc. etc.

So it ends up being like this: one country which has already got the money and resources, technical knowledge and capital, starts producing computer chips. Then another country without the benefit of similar development and support and resources, gets to be good at making bananas. Who do you think is going to turn out to be richest?

I think that in the long term (and this is quite apart from the forthcoming necessity as a condition of peak oil) we are all better off by becoming more local. Because local economies are going to be what matters in the post carbon age.

In the age of peak oil and resource depletion, efficiency is key. And with spiralling fuel and food prices, globalised economics will actually come to be seen as a bloated, wasteful and inefficient means of meeting our real, basic needs.

To meet the coming challenges, we need to localise our food production, and localise to the closest possible unit - like Mahatma Gandhi's sentiments above. This has happened with Cuba in its (albeit artificial) experience of peak oil. Something like 50% of Havana's vegetable food is produced within Havana itself.

The best way of maintaining food security will be for it to be produced as close to home as possible. Local independence and self-reliance unhitches people from the trials and the uncertainty of global food economics.

Which is why I think we should all be growing our own, and participating localised food economies.

Although it's more contingent for people in developing countries to start moving towards food independence, it's only slightly less relevant for us here in the UK because we're richer. The changes will certainly hit us where it hurts sooner or later.

And I've wondered for a long time whether all this isn't just crazy thinking and maybe I'm some crazed doomster survivalist just itching for societal breakdown.

But then I read this evening on the BBC that the results of a UNESCO report cites a healthy proportion of what I'm saying here. The WTO chief says aid should focus on improving agriculture.

It's late and I'm not sure I have an easy conclusion to all of this. Perhaps I'll just leave it there for tonight.

But I am interested in your opinions. What do you think about food crises being reported around the world? What's the solution? I'd love to hear from you.

 

Voluntary Simplicity Reconsidered

My ideas about voluntary simplicity have evolved in the past year.

Over a year ago, I think it was largely couched in terms of "Freedom from..." Freedom from stress, being in an unhappy job, chronic back pain, not being where I wanted to be, being in a built up busy city. It was largely hinged upon negatives

Now the picture is different. Voluntary simplicity for me has a changed meaning and is about all this:

• The most efficient means of being happy in any given situation. 80/20 thinking - taking the least effort to produce the greatest personal happiness.
• Regulating desire - by deliberately wanting less and questioning consumerism as a culture I've found myself more easily satisfied with less. I have to work less hard to be happy.
• Being mindful - meditation and studying buddhism has taught me (intellectually at least) that there is only one place that exists. And that's here and now. So I don't bank all my hopes on a future that may never arrive. I try my best as often as I can to be present, here and now, experiencing this. Although I'm only at the beginning of discovering this, I have found that somehow I have more 'moments', like this famous quote:

“If I had my life to live over, I’d try to make more mistakes next time. I would relax, I would limber up, I’d be sillier than I have been on this trip. I would take fewer things seriously. I would be less hygienic. I would take more chances. I would take more trips. I would climb more mountains, swim more rivers, and watch more sunsets. I would burn more gasoline. I would eat more ice cream and less beans. I would have more actual troubles and fewer imaginary ones.

 

You see, I’m one of those people who lives sensibly and sanely hour after hour, day after day. Oh, I’ve had my moments and if I had my life to live over, I’d have more of them. In fact, I’d have nothing else. Just moments, one after another, instead of living so many years ahead each day. I’ve been one of those people who never goes anywhere without a thermometer, a hot water bottle, a rain coat and a parachute. If I had my life to live over, I’d go places and do things and travel lighter than I have.

If I had my life to live over I would start barefoot earlier in the spring & stay that way later in the fall. I would play hooky more. I wouldn’t make such good grades, except by accident. I’d ride more merry-go-rounds. I’d pick more daisies.”

-Nadine Starr

I can't say that I've made all the best decisions, or that life is perfect or anything like that. I'm not always happy and far from being permanently serene and zen about life. But somehow, and it's not even to do with where I am, there's been a big change.

Fundamentally, I think it's simply that I have learnt how to be more here and now. The moments have always been happening but I've just been too embroiled in my thoughts and delving into the mud of past memories and the spectres of futures to come, that I never really paid enough attention to here.

And rather than living frugally, or downshifting, or working on the land (all of which I am doing) it's this particular thing, this training, that has given a different surface, texture, quality to my experience of life.

It's crazy, really. Because all I do is sit in front of my light box with a cup of tea and try to follow my breath. And my mind runs off like a puppy. I acknowledge that, then come back.

That's all I do.

But for me, now, it's become the basis of a simplicity that I had never imagined.

I've spent so much of my life zoning out when I've been unhappy, or getting drunk, or going to sleep as an escape, or reading books, or immersing myself in dreams about what I want to happen in the future, or putting shovelfuls of hope into dreams and schemes. I was numbing out, avoiding.

But now I am learning to be here. And it's remarkable.

Sometimes when I get here, it's all so ordinary yet all completely transformed and miraculous.

In 2008, I plan to be 'here' more often.

It's the only place to be.