January 8, 2012

Opting Out Increasingly Difficult/Illegal

Opt out now - while it's still legal!

During a time when the authorities say "go shopping", then praise you as 'patriotic' when you do, what happens if you don't comply? What happens if you wish to opt out of the whole materialistic rat race, and live a minimal, simple, self-reliant life?

Increasingly what happens are laws that prevent you from choosing that potentially desirable opt out route.

For example, there are many places with laws that prevent you from collecting rainwater. Or growing anything but useless energy-intensive, chemical-dependent grass within sight of your neighbours. Or laws that prevent you from sleeping in a car or RV on city streets, or from building a tiny house, or remaining off the grid.

Anti-opting out legislation is being passed by centralized governments at all levels in order to protect their turf and cement our dependence on a crumbling, complex system that they and their corporate friends profit from.

If we are 'allowed' to opt out of this system, and assert our independence through increased simplicity and self-reliance, we are less subject to their control. Worse for them, we cease to become their profit-providers.

That is why citizens growing gardens could become potential targets. A Geographical Information System has been used to put information on every garden in England in a data base. Rumours of a backyard garden tax are not limited to England - parts of the US are also looking at home gardens as being potential sources of much-needed revenue.

A side benefit for the government's corporate buddies is that the garden tax would also discourage people from eating non-corporate food.

Farmers have already been targeted, with devastating effects on both humans and biodiversity. In order to increase dependency and corporate profits, legislation has been passed to make seed saving, a tradition thousands of years old, illegal.

In India, simple farmers are forced into the complex world of patented, corporate seed stock, energy-intensive industrial agriculture, debt, bankruptcy, and eventual suicide.

Legislation and nuisance bylaws everywhere are being used to keep the 99% dependent on centralized governments and corporations that offer no solutions, only increased resistance to our choosing to opt out of their system.

There is some urgency in developing a sustainable system to replace the one that is currently designed to make the 1% wealth at the expense of the people and the environment.

Opt out now, while you still can. Choose to live simply and sustainably, and free. Choose to increase local resilience, grow your own food, and save your own seeds. Choose to be one of the architects of a new system, the people's system.

While it is still somewhat legal.

January 6, 2012

Excuses, Excuses, Excuses

 50 Translations: "I'm scared."

Oh, the excuses I have heard. My teaching career started when 'the dog ate my homework' was still the most-used excuse going. By the time I retired from teaching dogs everywhere had been liberated from blame and slept comfortably. The most used excuse for late work had progressed to 'my printer/computer/disk ate my homework'.

By now I am sure the grade school excuse has progressed again and is something like 'I dropped my FlashStick in the toilet/sink/puddle'. It is not just the informal research gleaned as a teacher of young children, but my observations of people in general that made me aware that one thing humans do really, really well is make excuses.

There are all kinds of excuses being used to justify why 20% of the planet's inhabitants pig out on 80% of its resources. My favorite is "we work hard - we deserve it". If that were true, African grandmothers raising their AIDS-orphaned grand kids would be among the highest paid people in the world.

I heard nothing but excuses during, and since, the climate change talks in Durban, South Africa. Embarrassingly, my own country was among the most vocal examples of using excuses to avoid and delay urgently needed changes.

It does not matter if it is uncompleted grade six homework, or inaction on global inequality, making excuses only makes things worse. This is a lesson we should have solidly in place by the time we are about 10 years old. No one feels good inside when they resort to excuses - it only increases and extends the pain.

The pain suffered by humanity and the environment has gone on long enough. It's 2012 - NO MORE EXCUSES. It is time to shine the antiseptic spotlights of honesty, integrity, and responsibility upon our problems, both personal and global. Only this will treat the infection of denial.

When our denial ends, and we face our problems head on, we take action. When we finally do, it feels good, and we wonder why we hesitated with our excuses in the first place.