I once live in a very back-to-basics lifestyle myself Lee. For about 5 years of my life. I had horses for power, and I grew all my own food. I had no vehicles save for a pedal bicycle. Because of the demand for mammon I was forced to have a job. If for no other reason than to pay for land taxes. Of course, working costs money too. That’s just an unavoidable side-affect.

Originally I wanted to use my horses to drive to work. However, that was not possible for a host of reasons. The two most obvious ones was there were no stables in town where I could park the horses whilst I worked. The second reason was simply because the town had an ordinance that no horses are permitted inside the town limits without a “parade” permit. So taking horses to work was out of the question. Our society simply won’t allow this natural resource to be used.

My second choice as to use a pedal bicycle. For two years I would ride a pedal bicycle back and forth to work (20 miles each way!), and the terrain was mountainous. My abs were well-defined.

However, it was no fun at all. Driving to and from work required that I share the road with 2-ton vehicles traveling at 50 and 60 mph or more. And they did NOT appreciate having the share the road with a bicycle. They acted like I had no business being on THEIR road! They would blow their horns at me, and many of them would purposely see how close they could drive to me with out actually hitting me. Some I truly believe would have indeed hit me intentionally had I not gotten out of their way.

In spite of their arrogance I put up with that crap for about two years. Then one day I finally decided that I don’t want to go through life dodging inconsiderate road-raged individuals. So I quit the job in down and found a job as a maintenance man at a public camp site. It was closer, and I was able to ride my horses to work through the woods instead of dealing with inconsiderate idiots on paved highways. The pay was much lower, but the work was more rewarding and I did that for the last 3 years of my back-to-basics lifestyle.

For reasons I won’t go into, I finally resigned to re-joining the rat-race. I became employed making smart bombs to blow humans off the face of planet earth.

Talk about the ultimate road-rage revenge!

We had a hitching rail and a water trough outside the hotel....sad but true.

I often wondered if I would see a wife hitched to the rail somedays...

We also had a paddock next to the school for wayward ponies.

Very 18th century town..was wonderful.

We were 13 years off the grid, four kids, it was labour intensive but very rewarding, and we had a low income community so bartering thrived...i worked for many farmers, for exchanges, and also for money at times...to pay for what we couldn't make.

I am on the grid now, yes I have succumbed, we had to sell the farm...when we separated, and managing on my own became very difficult...so I can empathise.

I think that living 'back to basics' can re-sensitise one to the natural rythms of the earth, and realise our place in it...

I know it did us, and our children, we were vulnerable and fragile, in our choosing to live the way we did...and so very dependent on seasons, weather, and the health of our land.

There’s no better lifestyle than being close to nature. Why mankind as a whole got away from that I’ll never understand.

That might sound strange coming form someone who obviously values science and scientific inquiry. I actually have nothing against technology. Technology in and of itself can actually be compatible with living close to nature.

It’s not technology that has ruined mankind, but rather his greedy abuse and misuse of technology to make it into the basis for a throw-away lifestyle that is based on capital gain rather than on a genuine desire to improvement the human lifestyle.

Most technological companies design their products to keep their customers under their thumb and dependent upon the latest and greatest upgrades which they purposely make sure won’t be compatible with the older equipment thus forcing it to be worthless garbage.

It doesn’t need to be that way at all. That’s the result of capitalistic greed, not of technology itself.

E.g. a comment on "the simple life". Regardless of whether one has the desire or ability to live "off the grid". I think growing ones own food is incredibly rewarding if it's possible- even a garden or herb garden can be rewarding, especially for children and young adults. There are so few tangible ways for them to achieve something in the short term that they can see benefits their family.

Education is important, but I think for a lot of the kids I work with, all they see is years and years of school ahead of them and they don't actually feel productive in the mean time. Growing food or making and building, creating something that is actually really useful and appreciated can make a huge difference.

That’s so true DD!

And what is it are they learning???

To become capitalists and contribute to the throw-a-way technologies?

Just so they can make money to support the whole cyclic beast?

Why aren’t they being taught to grow food in their back yards?

And to make their own clothes on pedal-driven sewing machines?

I have a treadle sewing machine and I actually like it better than the electric ones!

Moreover, what do they need to make a lot of money for?

So they can buy a great big houses that they don’t need,

then waste energy heating and cooling it,

buy an expensive automobile they don’t need,

and waste energy driving to the store to buy groceries that they could have grown in the back yard.

And then going into huge debt with interest to send their kids to school to do that same stupid thing all over again!

Also, why aren’t lectures recorded and made available for the public????

Teachers are delivering the same lectures over and over and over again for a select few students, when they could be sharing that knowledge with everyone to learn at their own convenience.

It’s all about protecting the “degree” and making people pay for it.

It’s not about helping HUMANITY as a whole.

It’s all about individual competition.

Someone please stop the planet!

I want OFF!!!!

I agree Abra, and have felt the same way since I was a child. Now, at 21, I'm in the cycle and hate it. Feel trapped and controlled by consumerism. Small towns offer little reprieve for people trying to make changes. Closed minds push the American dream down kiddies throats and my 6 year old niece is proud of her savings account but couldn't grow a carrot to save herself.

My husband and I decided long ago that when we are blessed with our pitter patters we are home schooling and teaching our child(ren) how to take care of themselves with Earth mother beneath their feet. I think it is the only way I could promise a chance of real life for my young.

It's very depressing, if you let it get to you

I agree Abra, bigger and more stuff hasn't made anyone I have ever known happier.

I have a friend who had some difficulties and ended up having to move from a large house to a one bedroom apartment with his 2 teenage children and his mother. Everyone he knew felt bad for him, but he recently told me that he would never have become so close to his children if this hadn't happened.

As far as the class lectures though some schools do make their lectures available- when I was an undergrad my state school showed most of our lectures on Public access TV and now they are available on the internet. Some other school do the same. But you have to pay for the class to get credit for it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Abra- For a minute I saw "DD" and I couldn't figure out what you were talking about!!! I thought you were making a comment about something else....

Then I remembered that I am the Devils Daughter.... hmmmm.... better go do something evil....

we can't judge humanity as whole just for the stupidity of a few.
too many things are going wrong with the weather and the distribution of wealth, but it has been said that is because of the stupidity and greed of a few.
nevertheless, the human race as a whole has a lot of value, if not we would not have so many people voluteering in Africa, and in too many poor places.
i don't agree that we deserve extinction even though the ones who rule our nations and those who control global corporations are stupid and greedy morons.

Overpopulation is a major factor that will prevent a return to a back-to-basics lifestyle. It’s obvious that the masses that are living on top of each other in city high-rises couldn’t easily return to a back-to-basics lifestyle living off the land. They are basically stuck in the machine of the rat race yet they are continuing to multiply with absolutely no thought of the bigger picture.

Even rural areas are quite congested actually. Because of local ordinances it’s actually against the law to live off of the land in many areas. I recently saw someone post that windmills were illegal in her area. So she could not even take advantage of this pollution free solar energy even if she wanted to. The law forces her to use fossil fuel to heat with.

It can be very discouraging for someone who would like to contribute to a healthy family unit and a healthy earthly environment when the very laws of the surrounding society forbid it. To do the morally right thing will land you in jail! You have no choice but to surrender to the beast of mammon.

It’s sad.

They are threatening similar things in my area. The are beginning to pass ordnances that say that if you aren’t already a farmer (actually making your living at farming) then you won’t be allowed to start up a small homestead of animals etc. They sent me a form and I put down that I have been truck farming ever since I’ve lived here and that I have horses, goats, bees, chickens, geese, and I raise fruits and vegetables.

My cat looked up at me and meowed. I know he was saying, “You liar!”. But I just replied, “Oh, I thought they were asking what I would LIKE to have”.

So anyway I’m still clear to rebuild by homestead if I want to. I have no desire to do it alone though. Any back-to-basics women out there looking for a short-term relationship??? (it’s only short term in that I’ll be off to meet my maker shortly, but maybe I could help you fix the place up before I go traipsing off to nirvana.)

I assure anyone that flippant is not a thing I am aware of being. I am only claiming what I believe is the problem. Humanity at it's worse.

Of course I am concerned about the children. That is why I am so upset about the condition of the world and it's unwillingness to take a stand fast enough. Spoiled Americans are absolutely not thinking of their futures. Water polution, air pollution, poisoned grounds. Sick and dying wildlife. Extinction emminent. Our faults. Not theirs.

The stupidity and greed of a few has grown to millions. All those HUGE houses for a family of four that a family of four used to only need under a thousand square feet to live in. Most were around 850 to 900 feet. One bathroom, or 1 1/2, one car maybe two garages. Now they are three and four and five car garages with not three but four and five bathrooms! One car to a family. Now it is a car for each and every one in the home and even a few motorized play things and not only individuallly owned cars but vacation vehicles too.
Leading to more fossile fuels being drained from our earth and poisons in the air. More nuclear plants and more and bigger buildings to harbour more and more poisons in the air.
People using so much and wasting and leaving tons of trash to be piled in landfills, taking away land that cannot be used for years. The stinch and burning of all that trash. ( big long pipes running through the ground burning the escaping gasses.) Trash being dumped into the oceans. What of our fish life?

My point being that most are not willing to let go of what they believe is their right to have, and as much as they want at any cost. Never thinking of the consequences. Nor caring. Thinking that this is their personal planet and to hell with anything else. So what if the animals are being uprooted from their homes and being killed and run over and lost to the betterment of the masses?

How many are willing to lose a car? Or be cooler in the winter, or warmer in the summer? Let the sprinkler systems go? Or the swimming pools? Go back to "1" television that the whole family watches together?

How many are willing to let go the plastic bottles? Paper plates and cups? Plastic grocery bags and ziplock baggies? Not to mention styrofoam. Rubber tires? The only thing I have to say about that is thank goodness that someone has come up with a way to recycle them into usable things that we would not recognize as old tires.

Look at all that fly a lot. Airplanes are deadly to our atmosphere.

Birds aere losing their habitats. Many new birds unseen in these parts showing up because they have no choice.

Okay, I quit. So, my points were; how many?
Kat

The most concerned ask today: "How is man to be preserved?" But Zarathustra is the first and only one to ask: "How is man to be overcome?"

I have the overman at heart, that is my first and only concern -- and not man; not the neighbor, not the poorest, not the most ailing, not the best.

-- Nietzsche, Zarathustra, Part Four

Well, like I say Kat, overpopulation is 99.9% of the problem. If only a handful of people were doing the things that you describe it wouldn’t be a problem. What makes it a problem is that there are hundreds of millions of people doing these things every day.

The earth is like an orange with mold growing on it, and we’re the mold.

Exactly. And, I like your analogy. Mold. Growing and growing and growing til it shrivels up and shrinks to nothing. Most can be reversed, if enough cared.

Kat

Question: What has anyone done to try and take back the planet? Restore some of it's natural beauty and pollute less in hopes of leaving our children with the good things we grew up with?

Kat

I’ve already recounted my story. I tried to live a back-to-basic lifestyle for 5 years using horses, and plain old human-power for the bulk of my activities. I won’t pretend that I was a perfectionist. Some things like a chainsaw and roto-tiller simply make sense. They produce results that far out-weigh their contribution to pollution.

However, during that 5 years that I lived like that, I felt that the tiny bit that I was offering by my actions were being far outweighed by the masses who were not contributing. In other words, from a practical point of view it was like peeing on a bon fire in an attempt to put it out whilst everyone else is tossing buckets of gasoline on it.

Was I actually doing anything significant? Or was I just kidding myself?

I seriously don’t believe that individuals can make a difference. At least not independently. Only collectively in large masses, but then they aren’t acting as individuals anymore right?

There is actually a site on the Internet called the “Church Of Euthanasia”, their slogan is “Save the Planet, Kill Yourself!”

Think about that for a moment.

If you wanted to do away with any possible pollution you could do just that. You could end your existence and that would be the greatest contribute of all because you would no longer pollute the planet.

Yet you know full well that if you died today that’s not going to drastically change a thing. Yet to remain alive, no matter how much you try to conserve, you’re going to pollute. It’s unavoidable.

Even today I don’t pollute nearly as much as the average American. I have a car but I seriously doubt that I put even 1000 miles on it in a year. I only use it to drive over to town and back when I need groceries. And that’s not very often.

Right now I am running a computer, and a single florescent light bulb. And I have a small freezer, and a very small counter-top refrigerator. That’s it. I heat my water with propane gas, but I only do that when I need it. I don’t let the hot water tank run constantly. I use about 200 lbs of gas a year and that includes my cook stove. That’s not much gas at all. We’re talking under $300 a year in gas. In the winter I heat with wood.

Soon I’ll be dead and that will be my biggest contribution of all.

No species deserves to become extinct but many have because of mankind its a probability that we will become extinct and it will probably be our own doing. we continue to dessimate our natural resources and kill off wildlife,for the few of us that wish to preserve the natural order there are millions willing to destroy it all for the sake of "progress".-Mankind is a disease for the most part destroying the earth at a rate to which the earth cannot compensate eventually we will kill this planet and make it inhabitable.our only hope would be that we mutated in order to survive....but the roaches will survive

Okay, me first.
I walk whenever possible. If it close, I walk.
I do not cook outside much anymore.
I do not fuel up until late evening.
I do not mow til early morning or late evening.
I plant plants, flowers and trees in my yard. I complain to developers about the tree removal to build new houses. (I have noticed that some develpments are now leaving established trees), I doubt any of my doing though. They tell me that ordinance says they have to plant one small tree in each yard. Whoopee (circles finger in the air).
I shop only at grocery stores that use only paper sacks.
I refuse to go to public swimming pools. Too much wasted water. Not to mention the chlorine usage. Pure poison. Cancer causing chemical.
I water early mornings, miniamlly. Late can grow mold.
I recycle my tires. Batteries, and plastic.
I do not use aerosol sprays.
I do not litter.
I conserve water when brushing my teeth and bathing and washing dishes.
I drive only small vehicles as does my mom and sons.
We have three tvs, but only watch one at a time.
We use one car when going somewhere so not to waste gas. We plan it that way.
And if we have things to do, we try to do it all at the same time to conserve. We map it out and make it work.
I turn down the thermastat at night in the summer and when we are at work. Or up, whichever it is we need, in the winter.
We use less lights, and we use the squiggly ones.
That is a bit of what I have been able to do in our home.
There may be more. It is only about giving up what we can and it gets better. It only hurt for a little while.
Kat

Well I chose the environment as my profession a long time ago (in college). So I'm fairly dedicated. And I think it's great if people want to go Abra and Jess's ways and live more simply and with less fuel usage, etc. It can be a beautiful way of life, engendering close familys- my Aunt and Uncle lived this way for several decades until ill health pushed them to choose a more urban and convenience-filled existance.

But no, not everyone could or would want to live that way. So I think the best thing for everyone is to assess their personal usage and habits and make whatever changes they can. And Abra, I do believe one person can make a difference. If I didn't I would be in despair because environmental education is a big part of my work and volunteer work as well.

I do believe individual actions matter because I have seen the ill-effects of cumulative impacts (lots of little things that don't seem so bad but when combined cause big problems). So I have to believe that the opposite is true as well... that the subtle changes each individual chooses to make will add up to make a big difference. It's possible.

I am very fortunate because I have been lucky enough to teach entire schools of 4th graders about pollution and then come back the next year and see that these now 5th graders actually still remember and care about what was discussed the previous year. For a lot of children it motivates them to know what animals are injured by their actions. So the fact that releasing balloons or littering frequently results in dead or injured birds, sea turtles, and other aquatic animals motivates them not to litter... I think it makes a difference, at least I hope so...

For my family, my motivation, was to attune them to the natural rhythms of the world outside them...to connect with more than their inner world.

Water is limited here, we are on tank water, it doesnt rain we dont drink, bathe or anything else..so we are very conscious of consumption.

We live by the ocean now, we see the refuse, the deitrus of modern life washed ashore...turtles choked by plastic can holders...plastic bags.

We see the dead baby dolphins drowned in a piece of net, we see the grieving parents...the pod.

We see our waste...our refuse all around us...and I hide none of it from the kids...

We grow our own food still, supplemental now, we are on a houseblock...they understand the cycles of consumption, and what energy is needed to produce it...we have owned our own table stock, they know where eggs come from, and every other thing...the clothes on their backs, how it was produced, what it took to make it.

They inherit this earth, and if they have no understanding of the gift, they will not have a full life in my eyes.

Global awareness is education.

I’m all for individuals doing what they can. And if enough individuals actually act on it some difference can be made. However, it still remains that it’s not the individuals who are causing the most damage, at least not directly.

It’s the big businesses, from the miners and loggers who rape the earth for raw materials, to the mills and refineries that turn the raw materials into usable supplies, to the factories that turn the usable supplies into throw-away products, to the trucking and transport industries that move the throw-away products to the outlets, to the air-conditioned or heated retail stores where the throw-away products are being consumed by the end-users. Not to mention all of the energy and pollution created by all of the workers driving back and forth to work for all the aforementioned companies.

Probably the single most important part of it all is the “THROW-AWAY” products that this is all based on. It’s in industry’s favor to keep the machine moving. All for the purpose of supporting the beast of mammon.

There’s no doubt about it. It’s mammon (money) or an economy-based society that is at the root of it all.

Mammon is the driving force behind it. Stop the machine and mammon dies, the economy collapses and poverty, chaos and depression result.

But why?

Do humans really need money to live? NO! They do NOT!

Our dependency on mammon is self-inflicted. Out decision to construct societies that are based on economy was an unwritten commitment that we all seem to have gone along with without even thinking of where it might lead.

It’s not about pollution and energy, it’s about a dependency on mammon. A dependency on a continually thriving economy. It’s all about money. But money is a man-made concept that has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with nature.

Does food cost money? NO! It’s doesn’t! At least not if you grow it in the ground using sunlight and natural composts and/or manures. Food is a free gift from god!

Yet we have rejected that free gift and have instead decided to pay men for the food we eat.

Why? Probably because we are guilty of sloth and we are too lazy to get out there and grow it ourselves.

However, why we got into our current situation is unimportant. The only important question now is how to get back out of it?

We’re not going to get out of it by simply buying less throw-away items. That’s not a viable solution because the beast of mammon would then die. And then the economy would go belly-up and we’d all be facing poverty and depression.

What needs to be done is that we all consciously move toward a back-to-basics lifestyle.

I might add too, that it’s not really necessary for everyone to do this. People who live in rural areas can easily grow much more food their immediate families could ever possibly eat. All they need do is donate their excess to the cities and they could feed the world.

Drive across America, how many millions of acres of meadows do you see just sitting there growing tingle weeds? These could be farmed by those people who are driving off to mind coal, cut down lumber, or work for any number of the factories in America. Instead they could stay home. Work on their own land just growing organic gardens, no pesticides would be needed because they wouldn’t have huge mono-crops. No chemical fertilizers needed because they aren’t in competition. Just grow what you can and ship what you can’t use off to the cities to be canned in factories that used to make disposable lighters.

There are workable solutions to our problems. But we simply aren’t even remotely considering them. All we know is mammon. We work to keep the beast alive. The “economy” is all we know. We can’t comprehend a society that is actually based on cooperation and a back-to-nature lifestyle.

I thank god I’m going to die soon. I’m tired of living in a world that worships mammon.