How to Grow Utopia
Waste not Want not
Winter is here in South Devon, and though as yet we have had only one morning frost, yesterday I was out in the garden collecting up all the branches and deadwood that were cut back from my trees and bushes in the spring, to bring in for firewood. Being prepared.
I am constantly surprised at how many resources we waste in the West, and then spend money to buy that which we have already thrown away, thinking it rubbish. Wherever did that thinking begin? What story behind this throw away culture? I leave that discussion for another day.
As I gathered the wood and broke it into woodburner sized pieces I got to thinking about my dad, who died in 2012 at the age of 87. He grew up during war years, living with a pair of elderly great aunts, and so had a constant stock of sayings they had taught him; “waste not, want not” being a favourite. As a young girl I didn’t understand this saying, only that dad said it whenever I was about to throw something away or leave some food, and that it carried with it an admonition not to be wasteful. Now, however, as I carried small bundles of sticks to my back door I realised what he was saying.
“To want” gets a bad press these days. We have come to associate it with greed, to ask for something we don’t need, but would like. (My father’s answer to this type of request was usually “I want doesn’t get”.) The verb “want” though has a quite different meaning to the one in such use nowadays. Think:
‘War on Want’
‘To want for nothing’
‘to be found wanting’
‘Want’ is a lack of something. Back in the early 70s when my dad was urging me to eat up everything on my plate, and my parents saved every scrap of everything to repair things with, “waste not want not” was still close enough to that truth. Both my parents grew up in impoverished homes; think only a pair of wooden clogs to wear over a harsh Lancashire winter, or wearing a pair of shoes to school that were several sizes too big because they were cheap and all my mum’s dad could afford, or collecting faggots from around and about to sell for kindling for a few pennies. That was industrial Lancashire for some in the 30s and 40s.
If you don’t waste anything you won’t lack for anything. Such a simple truth. Where did we lose the sense of this so far that ‘want’ has become synonymous with greed?
What I delight in nowadays that I live in a small cottage with a small garden in a small village, is that it is so much easier to live by the essential truths passed down to me in the old sayings here. When autumn is ending I am out on the lane in front of my home collecting up all the fallen leaves before they make mud to slosh through when the rains come, and sweeping my garden path of its leaves, so it isn’t slippery to walk on, to mulch my vegetable beds. When spring comes I don’t need to buy any bags of commercially produced compost wrapped in plastic; my beds are ready to plant into having had a thick layer of leaves to protect and add nutrients to my soil all over the winter months.
When I have finished collecting up the wood cut back last year to take into the house for firewood I look at the space left and see that the year’s worth of fallen garden debris onto that pile of wood has made a rich humus I can put directly onto the garden. I have had no need of a garden fire, or repeated trips to the tip, nor to fill up council refuse bins with my garden “rubbish”, I have made use of every bit, saving myself the cost of a good few days firewood now, and several bags of compost next spring. The cost; my garden may not look as year round neat and tidy as some, and I spent an hour or so outside and away from my work on the computer, but the fresh air and exercise probably did me good.
The simple satisfaction of having provided these things for myself without spending a penny nor harming the environment is of the sort that empty pleasures such as going on a spending spree or on a pub crawl could not hope to match. What is frustrating for me is to know that even this tiny scrap of land that I rent along with my old and need of repair cottage is not available to everybody.
When books like “eGaia”, which talk about the Utopia the future could be if we begin to make some different choices, and my own book in the writing “Tales of Two Times”, describe some of the ways in which we could be living in say, 2050, I like to consider that the sorts of activities I have just described will not be considered by some as going back to the Dark Ages, but as simple common sense.
We live on an incredibly abundant planet. We have free energy beaming down on us from the sun every day, we have fresh clean water pouring out of our skies in the form of rain and snow, we have trees for fuel, building and furniture, wind and waves we can harness for power and plants and animals for food; when we live in harmony with these natural forces, taking only what we need at any particular moment, and following the cycles of nature closely, we are provided with all we need for basic survival.
Of course we have become complex as a species and there are a great many of us, and many technological, scientific, social and economic advances have created a society that we have grown accustomed to, and with it many things we are loath to discard. What books like “eGaia” and “Tales of Two Times” urge us to consider is that perhaps we needn’t. It isn’t that we need to give up things that have been created to increase our well being (although we’d do well, on a regular basis, to consider the things we take for granted against the criteria of well being for ourselves, our community, and our planet including the other creatures on it, and check to see if they really do add to our sense of fulfilment, or whether they are empty pleasures, serving more to distract us from, numb, or deaden the pain of the things we find difficult to accept in our lives) perhaps all that is needed, argues Dr Gary Alexander in his informative volume about ‘growing a peaceful, sustainable Earth through communication’, is a reconsideration of how we are organizing our global society.
In chapter three of “eGaia” Dr Alexander creates a few fictional figures from the future to tell us how economics, for example, might be working in the decades to come. What I most enjoy about this chapter, which you can download for free from the author’s website, along with the full book, or order a print version if you prefer to read from paper rather than screen as I do, is that though there is very clearly a global market, spending Ecos, there is also a regional currency, and a form of local exchange.
This for me sums up all that is important in our journey to a future we can all feel proud of co creating; that the global health of our planet and our international relationships depends absolutely on getting it right from the ground up, from the smallest segment up, from the individual up. Nobody can take a serious role in making things better on a global scale if their personal footprint is higher than it needs to be, for all sorts of reasons.
Here I would like to add that I am not only referring to our ecological footprint; our impact on the environment by our use of harmful chemicals, over use of petrol driven locomotion, or wasteful ways such as getting a plastic carrier bag each time we shop, but our personal footprint in the sense of how heavily we need to rely upon others simply to get our basic needs met.
When our own personal well being is compromised it affects all of those around us; they may have to lend us money, bail us out, care for us when we are sick, possibly compromise their own state of well being in order to support ours. There is much to be done to empower individuals the world over and in my opinion this is perhaps more pressing than the more overtly urgent environmental challenges we face.
Why? Well, when each individual is able to care for his/her own basic needs; clean water, land on which to build a home and grow food, fuel for cooking and heating, then they are able to engage with activities at a local level; perhaps take part in community tasks. For example, in my village there is no government funding to deal with any emergences due to snow and bad weather in the winter. Very proactive and community minded, the villagers here, many of whom are from families who have lived here for generations, organised a snow warden scheme amongst themselves. On a Tuesday morning the farmers bring all their spare produce to the village hall where it is put for sale cheaply, and there is tea and biscuits for all the elderly folk and any that care to sit and chat with them a while.
Once a community is strong and can take care of all its members, that community can look outside of itself to see how it might engage at a parish or even regional level, both to get its needs met and to offer support in areas where it is rich. Here a different level of exchange is necessary. Though I can exchange bags of winter kindling for baking a Christmas cake for my neighbour who has a saw mill, and no money needs to change hands, when it comes to having our village bridge over the dual carriageway to the nearby town replaced we need expert help and resources that may not be local. Gary Alexander, in eGaia, describes how these different levels of interaction can work and discusses the ethics involved when we start to consider exchanging goods or services with those farther afield when we likely as not do not know the people we are exchanging with personally.
If, he says, we are to create an economy that is not only stable but one that contributes to our well being, then it is our reputation as a provider of goods or services that is paramount. People, when choosing who to buy from, will consider goods or services in the light of their impact on the individuals, local community, and environment from where they have been produced or sourced. In this way, those who consider well being, on all levels, will be successful in their exchanges, encouraging more behaviour that benefits both people and planet, on a local, regional and global scale.
Dr Alexander is not alone in his thinking about different economics being at least partially the answer to our current on-the-edge predicament. Mark Boyle showed us how to live without money in 2010, Transition Towns worldwide are experimenting with local skill shares that don’t cost a penny and creating strong community bonds in the doing so, as well as introducing local currencies, and Brett Scott writes about the growing alternative finance movement and how to build it by getting involved yourself.
eGaia is no pipe dream. It does not put forward such Utopian hypotheses without a sound knowledge of the sad truths of what is happening right now in our world that can make the future seem all too gloomy. Chapter 4 describes in easy to understand language many of the factors that contribute to the feelings of despair common nowadays when we look around us at war, poverty, resource depletion, relationship breakdowns, extinctions and the often catastrophic effects of climate change.
Yet still, as Charles Eisenstein so wonderfully writes, we cannot dream a positive future without understanding where we stand now. We have to acknowledge the wrongs we’d like to put right before we can build anew. We cannot build the house of the future on sand; we need to choose the right foundations, and this means examining the terrain well. What is firm and healthy, what will we keep as we construct our new way of being together, and what has come to the end of its growing cycle and gone rotten and needs to become the compost for the new to grow upon?
As I do my bit to meet my own needs in a way that is harmful to none, thankful to my ancestors for the wisdom they learnt through poverty and hardship, I am heartened deeply by knowing that there are so many around me that I can connect with in the cyber world of social media, who are dreaming, thinking, and then acting on behalf of a better world, an eGaia, a planet where we communicate, collaborate and celebrate all that is wonderful about being human on a planet that can meet all of our needs; so long as we remember that if we waste not, we won’t want for anything.
