danger v. opportunity
a much better piece on the subject of moving to a post-consumer america than what i wrote:
I grew up in Seattle, WA and was raised with the idea that money is equal to life energy and time and that it is important to spend less and wisely unless I wished to be constantly on the job and enslaved to a salary….
…To me it is seems exciting and inspiring to rely on our local communities, know our neighbors, grow our own food, barter/trade, craft our own clothes, fix our favorite pair of shoes, and enjoy each others company instead of passing the night away in front of cable TV with a frozen pizza made and packaged in Wisconsin and numbed thoughts. It gives us a positive creative way to utilize and conserve resources, combats isolation, gives us the chance to express skills that few jobs would allow, and lends to a more holistic sense of self that even folds art and spirituality back into our daily lives. It’s a revival of what I imagine my grandparents experienced growing up in rural farm towns, infused with urban DIY culture, activism, and spiritual consciousness. I know “hold on there you idealist hippie” you might be thinking, but I really think the time is ripe for it now more than ever.
It is a huge paradigm shift to think of spending less, needing less, and relying on one another more and I think this tends to comes across more like DEPRIVATION than FULFILLMENT to most Americans. Give up a Lexus and fancy French dinners before going to see “Les Miserables” to ride a bike thru the rain and play board games over home-made apple strudel? I think that living in a way that is not so strapped to the now-not-so-mighty-dollar, the ballooned American Dream, oil, and consumer materialism in general takes a lot of work, awareness, education, and commitment to alternatives. This lifestyle shift takes time to cultivate and also requires privilege to think about it in the first place and the right environment.
–from Surviving the Economic Meltdown: DANGER or OPPORTUNITY?
related: America’s New Year’s Resolution: Stop Being Stupid
and FYI: the chinese character for “crisis” does not equal “danger + opportunity”
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