Recently after looking into No Impact Man and thinking about most of the people who are doing really well with Riot4Austerity and what it means to living in a traditional sustainable culture I realized the connection between sustainable and subsistence. Most of the traditional cultures on earth that have lived in harmony with their environment in a sustainable way for thousands of years are subsistence cultures meaning they produce only what they need and little if any extra. If you live in a subsistence culture then there is little to set aside in case of disaster. We hear about these cultures when there has been crop failure, drought or other disaster that is causing wide spread suffering and death leaving us in the US with a negative impression of subsistence living. Some how we need to re-create our culture in a way that is sustainable and still more secure than a traditional subsistence culture. People like No Impact Man and some of the very successful Rioters do not have jobs. The work they do to create a sustainable life is their occupation. No Impact Man gets money for lecturing, selling DVDs and books, etc. A notable group of Rioters and other eco-bloggers I have kept up with have one person in the family (man or woman) who works a conventional job either full or part time and the other person works from home taking the extra time that is needed to patch pants, plant gardens, hang clothes out on a line, cook wholesome meals from scratch and do all the other tasks that are needed to reduce consumption. I term the extra time it takes to live in a sustainable way eco-hours. Eco-hours represents the extra time it take to hang clothes on the clothes line rather than throw them in the dryer. It occurs to me that Im happy to work part time but I dont want to give up my career completely and not everyone is cut out to be an avant-guard eco-warrior and go live in the dirt. We need to balance our work hours with eco-hours. So on one hand we have American culture were both adults are expected to go deeply in debt during their education so they can attain high paying jobs 40+ hours per week and are then so exhausted from the stress and long hours that they turn around and pay some one else to clean their house, do their laundry, keep their yards clean, cook their food and brew their coffee for them, propelling themselves to the peak of consumption. On the other side we have traditional subsistence cultures where there is a connection to the land, life is beautiful and the family is strong. The work is hard but stress is low and life is generally good until there is a plague or drought at which point everything goes to hell. Now how do we create sustainability that is on a level with subsistence? First off, I would like to suggest that a disposable income is generally not helpful. If you have a family where both parents work, then a large portion of the second income will be paid out again in child care. It goes further than that. Since the shift towards dual-income households, the cost of housing has accelerated so if you are a high income household and have extra earnings, there are strong economic and cultural forces that will try to pull that extra income out of your pockets and into housing, consumer goods and other forms of consumption. If you are able to resist it, good for you, but the average American will not. If everyone is working all the time that means less time to garden, repair what you have, shop used, exercise, cook your own food and walk places. The mad rush that so many are in from working is in part responsible for the high level of consumption in American culture. If you are working so hard that you have to give up control of your own life it will inevitably separate you from sustainability. Yet I know Im not cut out to be a farmer or for animal husbandry or to be a hunter and because I do think things like catastrophic health insurance are a good things, I believe the balance lies some where in the middle. That some people should have a job and others should have an domestic/natural occupation. Start off by trying to divide your life 75% / 25% between the activities you need to earn a traditional income and the activities you need to preserve wealth and create sustainability like sharing food with your neighbors, gardening, fixing things that are broken and walking to work. This is a wonderful opportunity in our culture to deal with underemployment. Currently the US unemployment rate is at about 10% but that its actually higher than that because the US dosnt count people who have given up looking for work. The actual unemployment rate is estimated to be closer to 22%! The other 78% would like to be working less. We need to teach ourselves, regardless of employment level, how to be happy with what we have and encourage ourselves to spend the balance of the time doing tasks that allow us to live a comfortable but sustainable lives without mass consumption.A green career might be a great way to lower your impact and help others lower theirs, but its not a free ticket. Most eco-living is still very consumption based because our culture is consumption based. By choosing to be less employed you can lower your stress level and find more time to raise your own children, maintain your own living environment by learning to be handy and stop working to pay the contractors, drycleaners, housekeeper, gardener and nanny and restaurant staff. If you cannot, maybe your spouse can? It may be scary. It may be an eco/ecomonic change that is coming weather you like it or not.
- Log in to post comments