Sustainable living the Garbage Warrior way

Because this documentary can be found and viewed in full on YouTube, I'm posting the full video here. However, since I'm not sure if this a legal upload, I'll remove the full lenght version and replace it with a trailer of the documentary if anyone has issues with this being posted here.




There are many very interesting things said and highlighted in this film, but I want to point out two issues that were only lightly touched upon that are possibly the biggest hurdles of this sort of building (and thinking!) becoming the norm.
1. is the complexity of the US legislature system. I say the US because this is what's shown in the documentary, but the reality of it is that the same complexcity plagues all countries. At least all western countries. Even with the best of intentions and with the most uncorrupt of government officials, there is still the physical system of governing with laws that have to be written so that there's room to interpert enough but not too much. This is an effort to make those exceptions, to account for those human variables, that make all situations unique so that a rich man stealing a loaf of bread out of boredom and a poor man stealing one out of hunger could, in theory, be judged on their individual terms. Does that flexibility end up working like this in practice? Well... depending on which part you want to focus on either occasionally yes or occasionally no. But imagine if it wasn't there at all. Because of the INflexibility of the law, all exeptions would have to be written down individually as they came along and the system would become completely inpenetrable within just a few years. Currently passing new legislations, changing the old ones, is hard, and not just because politicans don't understand but because the political system is massive, not easily penetrable and is made up of humans with varying degrees of desire to improve it and more importantly, with varying points of view on what exactly is an improvement.

Which brings us neatly to point number 2. While these ecological houses that use no power or water (and grow their own food) are magnificient and exactly the sort of thing that we should be working towards they, at the same time, completely undermine our current societal structure. I'm not saying this is good or bad, just that that's what it does. Power to heat your homes, cook your food, use electronics.. all comes from companies that provide jobs, that provide tax money to the state. Same with water. And same with the food you eat. If all these areas of business would suffer massive reduction in their global revenues (because let's face it, most food companies are owned by the same handful of parent companies meaning all that money falls into very few hands at the business end of the line regardles of which brands you buy. And that is me being cynical.) this would be a big deal as far as global markets go. It would force a change in how and what we view as work and how we support ourselves because the manufacturing of basic living essentials would no longer be "outsourced" to companies and would no longer provide jobs enough to have any economy leaning on them. The western world is already suffering from the change of moving away from funding their economy by manufacturing essential goods. Those goods largely come from cheap labour countries these days and yet our societal structure has not changed to create jobs in producing non-tangible goods. Producing content. It clings on to the idea that services, ideas, art.. are not worth money or at the very least, are not essential to human life. Or if they are, they are in a very exclusive way where the charismatic talker can make people pay millions for something that is expected for free from the less charismatic one (yes, graphic designers, I'm looking at you).
All of this would have to change if this type of ecological living became the norm. Or the other way around: All of this needs to change if ecological living is to become the norm. A functioning alternative to a solely capitalistic system.
And that is no small change for the western society.

On crack

It's been a rather terrible couple of weeks in that my perspective has been on doing crack and then getting frustrated when nothing happens. There was the waiting for the university entrance exam results(1), the benefits office(2), the skin(3) and probably some other things that I forget now and what's terrible is that none of those things are as terrible as I'd want them to be so that I could indulge in brain crack(4).

I should probably include annotations in the entry.

There, added.
(1) I didn't get in the uni or the degree program I wanted. I'm on reserve spot #3. This is not terrible for the simple reason that I can study the first year courses through open university while NOT enrolled officially as a student and claim unemployment benefits as opposed to student benefits. The difference between these two is about 300-400€ per month in favour of unemployment benefits, which brings us to...
(2) .. the benefits office. After over 3 months of waiting for them to make a decision on my benefits (a process that should by law take 30 days) I got a negative decision for the first 2 months I've been in Finland and not a peep on the all the other months after that. This isn't good, but it's not as terrible as it feels. And I managed not to swear at the boy in the benefits office and told him I was sorry for being short with him because obviously it's not his individual decision and he said he understood that after 4 months of no income at all, I might be a little tense. The good thing about all of this is that for once, none of the hiccups in the proceedings are actually my fault. They're solely the failings of the system to function the way law requires it to function. And now we wait for another few weeks for the rest of the paperwork to pass through.
(3) The skin has not been reacting favourably to OCM which of course hasn't exactly improved my mood. Why is this ultimately a good thing? Well, it just struck me today that after cursing that silly doctor who wanted to fix my skin with topical ointments that obviously wouldn't address the actual cause of the situation, I was doing the same thing with the OCM. With some people it works perfectly for just this sort of thing, but quite possibly, with those people the reason for the skin acting up wasn't in the rest of their body not functioning properly. And to be fair, who wouldn't want solutions that were as easy as just changing the product that you put on your face because the alternative would be to change things that you just don't wanna.... like leaving out cappuccinos. I don't wanna. But if it's a choice between leaving comforting foods out for now and getting skin to calm the fuck down or keeping those comforting items on the menu and have to pay for paper bags to wear over my head and oh, use twice as much money and time.. there's really no choice. But I still kinda don't wanna. Because I should just be able to live like a 5 year old and run around the streets naked and pee where I stand and everyone should think it's totally charming and give me lollipops. And that sort of brings us to...
(4) ... brain crack. "Brain crack" is a term possibly coined by zefrank describing how addicting it is to come up with ideas and never actually do anything with them because you're "maturing" them or "nurturing" them or other such words that describe the fermenting process. We like the idea that ideas are like fine wine or cheese and the longer you let them sit in your head, the better they get because you're perfecting them so that eventually you'll have that Idea To End All Ideas that will solve world hunger and capitalism and syphilis and everything bad and wrong ever in the world and in the process make your life the sort of perfect that you want it to be inside your head. And hey, maybe there was once an idea that fermented in someone's skull like this and when it finally came out, it was awesome. But for 99% of people that nurturing process is just a way of a) not doing anything that would require actually doing anything, b) a way of procrastination and c) a way of holding on to the notion that we could be something great if we wanted to, we just don't want to right now. In short: change is scary! Failing is scary! The fuck I will put myself out there, people might actually see that I'm a human being just like they are and that I'm not perfect! Hell, I might have to face that! No thanks!
If you are addicted to brain crack, fear not, most of us either are to some extent or have been.

The thing to do with brain crack is to watch this video by zefrank on it. And then think to yourself that if this is how the brain works, by forming physical links between things that it finds pleasurable and gratifying and the things that you do, surely you can strenghten the link between immediate action and execution of an idea and immadiate gratification just like you can between eating pizza and feeling a bit less bummed out. I learned to like eating cheesy pasta when I'm bored or frustrated, so surely I can learn to like drawing when I feel those same things. Or taking a walk. The human body is nothing if not a constantly changing organism.
And if you need a bit of extra motivation, just keep asking yourself "if I didn't do this thing today (or now) how would I feel about it tomorrow? Would I want to kick my own butt for being a lazy bum and bumming around all afternoon/evening/morning/day instead of doing the thing I actually want to be doing?"
Believe me, you don't want to get yourself angry. You wouldn't like getting your butt kicked by yourself.

Oh and walked barefoot on grass. It was awesome. So I did it twice.
And I will never ever do crack again.

End note: there's a high possibility that "cheese" and words for other forms of dairy will make frequent  appearances in this blog in the coming month. I'm not sorry.