 |
| The original staycation |
Activist Gary Snyder once gave the shortest answer ever when asked what people should do to save the environment: "Stay home." This solution fits with NBA's philosophy - stay close to home, consume no more than our fair share, and learn to survive and flourish in the local ecosystem.
Snyder's brand of environmental activism is based on "reinhabitation" and "wild mind".
Reinhabitation deals with committing to life in a specific place, and growing to understand oneself as a part of a community with local plant and animal life. Wild mind for Snyder means "elegantly self-disciplined and self-regulating." Nature takes care of itself, and so should we be taking care of ourselves. So far we haven't been.
Citizens of rich countries will have to become self-disciplined and self-regulated so that the rest of the world does not need to suffer the results of our high consumption habits. If we only took our fair share of the world's resources many of the problems experienced by less affluent nations would disappear.
If we limited our use of oil, for example, things would automatically improve in a nation like Nigeria, a place that has been greatly affected by Shell Oil drilling.
One part is easy. Stay close to home, just like we used to before, and will again some day, even if a small group does manage to escape to start over and plunder another planet somewhere. The harder part will be learning to control ourselves.
This is very cool picture, haha! I'm going to send it to a few people. Summer is here and as usual people are nagging me: "Where are you going on vacations?" and I'm like: "I stay at home" - they laugh. I don't care. When they will have another 20-30 years to work before being able to retire I will already retire and I will be laughing at them having to go to work. Nothing is worth more than freedom.
ReplyDeleteyeah
ReplyDelete