The original essay and your response are both insightful and valid but outside of the scope of most of us within the narrative you use. I am not offering criticism but highlighting the difficulties for normal people to engage in this discussion and to therefore have any meaningfulness of the need for change in their lives.
Some of us have instinctive feelings that the current ideology is wrong but don’t necessarily have the knowledge, the means, or the time to change in a meaningful way and continue to spin out of control consuming too much and out of touch with nature.
I live small, I grow my own food at home and on an allotment. I keep chickens. I’ve downsized so my work output is small, but so are my outgoings. Most people see me as slightly bonkers, although they would love the time I have to do the things I want. I explain that input (work) and output (spending) need to be in balance and that applies wherever and how you live. In response I get well it’s alright for you, you have a garden, but I didn’t for eight years, hence the allotment. It’s alright for you, you have a good job, well I didn’t always I went to university in my late 40s to get a degree and my finances suffered and my husband was made redundant twice, so I’m not an Alright Jack. I’ve got no state pension as expected, the Government stole it. I’m still working in my 60s and I resent people thinking I am okay, but the world picks on them and yet when you offer solutions like, a garden share with an older person struggling to manage, or a community garden they just blow you out of the water.
The truth is that in the Western world we have little in the way of community, we are isolated and to an extent selfish. We are obsessed with greed, materialism, status and aren’t prepared to come out of our bubble and see the ‘real’ world until there is nothing left on the table to feed the kids, or no more petrol in the car to drive everywhere.
My muddled rant equates to how the hell do we get the message over to everyone and not just the converted? How do we move away from the te LIE vision where passive people sit and watch junk TV instead of getting out into nature and growing food, or growing a community? How do we get people out of cars voluntarily to use public transport, or a bike, or walk? Instead they race through residential roads not caring about residents, or race through the countryside not caring about animals or just taking the time to enjoy the beauty.
There are many days when I despair and think it would serve us right if this all came to an end. At this moment in time so many are not listening and don’t care. I say this after carrying a bag full of empty cider cans I carried to a bin, after rescuing them from a hedge, in a field of cows. Do those people care? Will they read the essay, the responses, no. Do they deserve this planet, no, not unless they evolve a lot quicker because it will have died of neglect, by greedy psychopaths that run the place and complacent humans who allowed it to happen. My faith is wearing a bit thin today, tomorrow I might feel better, but after 40 years of reading the same stuff about the environment and reading Aldo, Waldo, Hartmann, Carson and many, many others I see so little in the way of change in ordinary people it drives me to believe it won’t happen any time soon without intervention from above. The Creator needs to get a Jack boot on and give us a swift kick in the rear.
