Small Revolutions: Voluntary Simplicity in Devon

Food, Biofuel and Peak Oil: No-one gets left behind.

This is about the coming food shortages.

Well, I say coming. What I actually mean is that it is already happening for some.

There were the Mexico Corn riots where hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets because the price of corn had gone up 400%.

Because the price of oil is so high, it is more profitable for farmers to produce and sell corn for the biofuel market where it fetches higher prices.

That's land not being used to feed people.

The rush to produce corn has caused the world price of fertiliser to double in 2007 meaning that the poor farmers in sub saharan Africa who really need the fertiliser to grow stuff, may well not be able to afford it - producing less food in that region.

The price of wheat has rocketed too. Kazakhstan, Argentina and Russia have all put export restrictions on wheat. Source: BBC

The World Food Programme has outlined stark choice of getting more money, or rationing and feeding fewer people (this isn't luxury stuff, we're talking about the basics to simply stay alive and maintain a basic level of health to escape disease and malnutrition). Source: BBC

According to Independent Bangladesh, wheat is up more than 180%, soybeans are up 82% and rice has doubled in the past year. In America, 16% of land formerly planted with wheat and soybeans is now growing corn, most of it going into biofuel.

The price of rice doubling means that a 2kg bag of rice now costs half a day's wages. This is about the margin of survival, not luxuries. (Independent Bangladesh)

We're beginning to see a convergence in food and energy prices. Right now, it's not just because of biofuel, but at heart I believe, we are seeing the beginning effects of peak oil with oil at $100 plus per barrel being the main trigger for all of this.

There are other reasons of course which I will briefly spell out here:

• Inundations in some parts of the world, drought in others (shifting weather patterns are a feature of global warming
• Meat production - growing affluent markets such as China are increasing the demand for beef and more grain is needed to feed the beef animals

If, as I suspect (and I am not an educated commentator, I surf and find things out in my spare time) that peak oil has in fact hit and this is the frontier of what is to come, then it shows a haunting overture to what is to come.

And here’s the central point:

I really absolutely believe that we can all get through it. I really do.

But it's going to be much bigger than a battle for food. It's going to be a showdown between the twin forces selfishness and fear (in all its manifestations, including denial) on the one hand, and love and compassion on the other.

There is a classic line in the kids cartoon movie Lilo & Stitch: "no-one gets left behind" and that's the policy we have to take.

No-one gets left behind. Whatever happens we’ve got to make sure everybody is fed.

How do we do that, and how does it relate to our individual actions, how does it relate to what I can do every day to be part of that change right here?

That’s what I am going to explore in my blog over the next few weeks.

Blatant plagiarist that I am, I am going to call it Digging for Victory.
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Epicurus

"Not what we have but what we enjoy constitutes our abundance."

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Being Poor

Financially things are a bit tight right now. Downshifting isn't rosy all the time, and it;s a struggle to save for our wedding in August as well as make sure I have transport to work (purchasing a secondhand moped) and pay off overdrafts.

In money terms, we're poor.

Cliche as it is, we're so much richer in other ways.

Life is no longer about working like a dog and deferring pleasure to some dubious and vague future endpoint. I am living my happiness right now - I am no longer waiting for it to arrive.

Devon is beautiful. and I'm working outside on a farm doing as close to my dream job as it is possible to be (the only difference being that one day, I hope to do similair things with my own land and make a living from it).

There are compromises of course. Things we can't afford, wants that can't be satisfied without the money we haven't got. But it's ok!

Last week, we managed to get 16 meals out of a free range chicken! But every meal was truly delicious (chicken, pumpkin and soya bean barley risotto were the first two, then stir fried wholemeal noodles, and the bones and bits were boiled and made 12 lunches).

I love the buddhist phrase "you only have moments to live". It invokes a brief sense of urgency when you read it one way. But if you only had a few moments left, you'd try to be totally present, experiencing the life that was there, rather than wishing yourself somewhere else. And then you read it the other way - that despite our habit of drawing a line from past to present to future, both the future and the past are not really real - they're only in our minds as anticipation and memory traces. So really all we have are a series of interconnected presents, moments if you will.

Since this life change there have been more moments. Moments when I have stopped to look at sunsets and sunrises, or watch a marvellous earthworm wriggle on my hand. Moments just cuddling up in bed and not wanting for anything. Moments where I am happy to be just here, without wishing myself anywhere else.

I can't honestly say when else I have been happier in my whole life.

So, for moments anyway, those bills don't mean flip.

I know that there is someone lonely executive at my bank who is minted to all hell, not a debt in the world, eminently enviable. And he doesn't have a sniff of the happiness I experience every day.

Every day now I am ready to die because I know I am living my moments on the right path. And may that continue until I get very old and wrinkled like a prune, with my bones barely hanging together.

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.

Woohoo! Ginger Beer Plant!!

This week I've received a wonderful present through the post from Mel at beansprouts - a genuine ginger beer plant.

It's settled in nicely, and is living in an old golden syrup jar.

What I've read about the culture is really amazing. It's really a symbiotic mixture of organisms such as Saccharomyces florentinus and Lactobacillus hilgardii. They form globules of jelly, looking a bit like candied ginger or something but a lot softer.

So within a week or so I should be ready to start brewing my own ginger beer.

One thing left, I have to give it (them?) a name. What about Simba, as in symbiant?
 

Stop Junk Mail

I've just registered at the mailing preference service online, nit just for the current address, but also the previous address and for previous occupiers no longer living here.

This should stop, given a bit of time, lots of unnecessary junk mail being created, transported and then needed to be tutted at and recycled.

If you live in the UK, you can remove yourself from these mailing lists here: http://www.mpsonline.org.uk/mpsr/

Also, when you go on the electoral register, make sure you opt out of the public list as marketers can use this list I think.

Apart from the environmental reasons, it just makes for less clutter in your life.

Extinct.

I've just seen on the news that after a major survey of the Yangste river, scientists are ready to conclude that the freshwater dolphin, which had been in existence for 20 millions years, is now extinct.

The news report cited China's expansion, need for oil and power etc. as one of the defining reasons, as if they were being inveteratelt selfish. Which made me angry.

The Chinese government only wants have the same quality of life for its inhabitants as we get in the UK. And furthermore, it is the west's thirst for cheaply made consumer goods of all kinds which has fuelled their economy and expansion.

We, who buy twice as many clothes because they're now twice as cheap, we who live in a throwaway culture, are complicit in all of this.

So who's to blame?

I've always thought that ecology is a lot more than just buying the right things. It's about more than buying organic food and fair trade coffee. Because everything we buy has impacts.

Voluntary simplicity is, for me, about taking just what you need from the world and giving back what you can to the world. It's about satisfying needs simply and ethically. And by living a more modest way of life, we help use resources more responsibly.

If you were to ask me what made these mammals extinct, I would hold consumerism to account. What else has fuelled the boom in  the chinese economy? The dolphins may have died because of the great increase in fishing nets, but the fish were required for people who were working as part of a large economic system. If you trace it back, there is consumerism.

It is not about finding someone to blame, but rather understanding the inter-dependence of our actions. I dread to think how many cheap goods I have in my room from China.

I'm complicit too, and that makes me sad.

It's not about retreating into a shell and never buying anything, but it's understanding that we only need so much, and if we require too much then ultimately we're taking part in destroying the world with our own greed.

We just killed the last freshwater dolphin.

My last 6 months

I've been trying to find the words for how I have felt about the last 6 months. This morning at the library I found a book by Pema Chodron where she expressed exactly what I want to say.

So I'll quote her instead.

"In 1995 I took a sabbatical. For twelve months I essentially did nothing. It was pretty much the most spiritually inspiring time of my life."

LETS (Local Exchange Trading System)

Yes, Exeter does indeed have a LETS organisation.

http://www.exeterlets.org/

I love the way LETS is so subtle. It creates an economy where money is not used, essentially allowing people an agreed way of sharing skills and services as well as receiving them.

It's subtly radical and decentralist, just like the philosophy and practise of permaculture...