Self Care

I guess we all need this kind of reminder once in a while.   I got mine recently.

The first and most important piece of social change is taking care of yourself.   I’ve heard this as the oxygen mask strategy. When you fly in a plane, they inform you that in an emergency, an oxygen mask will descend from overhead, and when it does, you are to put on your own first before helping anyone else.  Really, you can't work on changing anything or helping anyone if you aren't able to function. You are one of the most important parts of social change--whether you are building a community or out in the street committing civil disobedience--and you need to be in decent shape to do this.

My own reminder came after several hours of working hard with others on a compost project--mostly shoveling compost out of piles and into bags.  Like I said, I worked pretty hard and was happy with the job I did, but the next morning I was in rough shape. For anyone new to this blog, in spite of my name, I am not a young woman, I am an old man.  I’d like to pretend that I am thirty but I am well over twice that. And I don't know exactly what I pulled, but I was hurting.

As I said in my last post, I have stopped doing things like Point A and Commune Life--a lot of which was internet work.   I spent much of the winter reading or on the computer. Now that spring is here, I want to be outside doing stuff. But not having done much over the winter, I think I overdid it.

Usually I get away with things like this because I stretch every morning. So there are certainly things that I do to take care of myself. Obviously I need to do more. I need to slow down and pay attention to how I move when I am working. I have not had a very physical life and now there is a bunch of real work that I want to do, and the only way I am going to get to do any of it,is to be careful and take care of myself.

I often support others in focusing on taking care of themselves, first.  Now I get to follow my own advice.

Quote of the Day: “If I wished to defeat those who wanted to use their lives to make a difference, this is exactly the way in which I would go about it.  Few such people would be tempted from their purpose by fame, or power, or even wealth. … I could use their own dedication against them, driving them to work until they became so depleted and empty that they could no longer go on.  I would make certain that they never discovered that blessing life is about filling yourself up so that your blessings overflow onto others.” - Rachel Naomi Remen

Studying Nutrition

Many, many, many, many years ago, I was ever so briefly a nursing student. (Yes, among many things, I am a nursing school drop out.)  I did well in the academics but I was a disaster doing the bedside work. One of the things I enjoyed learning about was nutrition.

And nutrition is still one of the things that I’m interested in. When I think about agriculture, a question arises.  What should we plant? Which leads me to the question of, what foods are better for people? How do we know? And one way of knowing is by studying nutrition.

I have been looking in libraries for a really good nutrition textbook.   I’m not interested in the latest diet or food fad, I want to know what mainstream nutritionists currently think.   (Okay, my nutrition education was from the 1970s, some things have changed since then.) I finally found one that I liked this winter, but then I left town for some traveling and returned the book.   Since I got back, I have been looking for that book, but it's no longer in the library and, stupidly, I didn't write the name of the book down. I went looking in the Queens library system catalog and did find something that looked okay in the catalog but turned out to be some kind of outline rather than a text.  (The book itself has the additional heading, “Student Note-Taking Guide”. Unfortunately, that part wasn't in the catalog.) Rather than just return it and try again, I decided to use it in conjunction with one of those ‘Idiot’s Guide’ books (which generally have decent information, even if the format is very commercialized and silly).  I figured between the two, I should get some halfway decent information. In the future, I may go looking for that good textbook again.

So what did I learn?   Here's some basics. First, there are six categories of nutrients: carbohydrates, fats, proteins, vitamins, minerals, and water.   Yes, water is a nutrient. The first three categories all have calories--as does a seventh non-nutrient, alcohol. Something that I did remember from my nursing years is that carbohydrates and proteins have four calories per gram, alcohol has seven calories per gram, and fats have nine calories per gram. All of the first six categories pay important parts in your diet.

Most of this stuff is common knowledge.   You want to get enough calories to thrive but not much more. Exercise as well as nutrition is important in maintaining your weight as well as your health. You need to get all your vitamins and minerals.  Eat plenty of vegetables. (Really. Probably the best piece of dietary advice I can give.) Drink plenty of water and get plenty of rest.

But a couple of things that aren't so obvious.  Your body needs sodium as well as potassium, but the ratio is important. You need to make sure that you are getting more potassium than sodium.   Fruit is a good source of potassium. Likewise, some fatty acids are essential, but you need to get more omega three than omega six. Fish is a good source of omega three, but for vegetarians like me, nuts and seeds (especially flax seeds and chia seeds) are also a good source.

Not all vegetables are alike.  I am a strong advocate of leafy greens (like kale, collards, spinach, and dandelion greens) and the orange veggies (like carrots, sweet potatoes, winter squashes, and pumpkin).  And, of course, you can never go wrong with broccoli.

Finally, for vegetarians and vegans, make sure that you get enough B12.  Unfortunately, the best way to do this is to take a supplement, since B12 is only found naturally in animal products.

Social change depends on strong, healthy people, and since the society I want to create is one that meets everyone’s needs, knowing what we need nutritionally is important.  And thus I study nutrition.

Quote of the Day: “... nutrition is the science of how the body uses food. In fact, nutrition is life.   All living things, including you, need food and water to live…. If you don't eat and drink, you’ll die. Period.” - Carol Ann Rinzler

Thank You Power

I’m currently working in a bookshop (part time, mostly to have a little spending money).  I’m not sure how good an idea it is; it’s a little like hiring a kid to work at a toyshop.  There are so many books and so little time.

I found this book, Thank You Power (by Deborah Norville), in the dollar bin at the store.  There isn’t a lot in it to distinguish it from a lot of similar books.  (I think Brené Brown is one of the better writers in this area and I should review her Spirituality of Imperfection someday.)  But it’s a great reminder of the importance of gratitude, has a bunch of scientific studies that back this (and all sorts of other positive stuff) up, and has some pretty good quotes.

Here’s one about how the best way to be happy is to do things for other people (and there are a lot of studies that show this):  “Happiness is a by-product of an effort to make someone else happy.”  (Gretta Palmer)  The converse of this is that directly pursuing happiness is a sure-fire way not to achieve it.

Another way to achieve happiness is to do meaningful work, especially stuff that inspires you.  The quote for this one is: “If you observe a really happy man, you will find him building a boat, writing a symphony, educating his son, growing double dahlias or looking for dinosaur eggs in the Gobi desert.  He will not be searching for happiness as if it were a collar button that had rolled under the radiator striving for it as the goal itself.  He will have become aware that he is happy in the course of living life twenty-four crowded hours of each day.”  (W Beran Wolfe)  Pretty true (if you ignore the sexist assumptions in the quote.)  I think, of course, that the best way of all is to do meaningful work that makes a lot of other people happy.

Finally, perhaps the key thing that can really bring happiness is being thankful.  To everyone and for everything.  It’s an important and often neglected practice.  And that’s why I bought this book.  Even though it may not be the best written book I’ve read, gratitude is the main focus of Thank You Power.  

Being grateful, constantly appreciating others and life, changes us.  We can’t be reminded of that too often.

Quote of the Day: “What if… the secret to happiness was within each of us?  What if a lasting sense of completion, an enduring sense of completion, was possible--simply by changing the lens through which we viewed daily life? …

“Here’s the good news: you’ve got the power right now. … That power begins with two words: thank you.” - Deborah Norville

Addiction and Connection

I've just read a pretty interesting article online. I'll admit that I'm skeptical about it, but the premise is intriguing.  It's all about the question of what causes addiction.  The basic idea (and the author backs it up with a bunch of studies) is rather than chemical dependency being involved, he claims that the cause of addiction is isolation and disconnection. 

Johann Hari makes at least two major points from this.  The first is that the war on drugs doesn't stop drug addiction.  He thinks, and uses the example of what's been done successfully in Portugal, that drugs should be decriminalized and addicts should be given social supports.  This is not only more humane but works a lot better. 

More important to my thinking is his second point.  We also need to deal with the social isolation and lack of connection that this society fosters.  As he put it, "We need now to talk about social recovery -- how we all recover, together, from the sickness of isolation that is sinking on us like a thick fog."

I think (no surprise to anyone who reads this blog) that community is one of the main antidotes to isolation and that we need to rebuild this society so that it's based on human connection (as well as our connections to the earth and the ecosystem) rather than selling products and controlling people.  This is real social alchemy.


Quote of the Day: "...the opposite of addiction is not sobriety. It is human connection. ...
"Human beings are bonding animals. We need to connect and love." - Johann Hari

Biology 101: Cellular Respiration

Take a deep breath. Now what just happened?

Okay, you took in air and the oxygen in it was absorbed by your lungs and travelled through your bloodstream to your cells. Now what? What do your cells want oxygen for?

Cells (as I put in my last post) are complex organisms, always in motion, always working. That work is powered by the mitochondia (also called 'the powerhouses of the cell'). The process of energy production that they do is called cellular respiration.

Cellular respiration is a process that converts a molecule of sugar (glucose)--or some other energy source: carbohydrate, protein, or fat--and six molecules of oxygen into six molecules of carbon dioxide and six molecules of water. (The chemical formula is C6H12O6 + 6 O2 → 6 CO2 + 6 H2O.) It actually consists of three processes: glycolysis, the citric acid cycle (aka the Krebs cycle), and something called oxidative phosphorylation (aka the electron transport chain).
Glycolysis is the process where glucose (or some other carbohydrate/protein/fat) is broken down into the chemical pyruvate. It takes place in the fluid of the cell (which is called the cytosol). This is done as a first step and is in itself a complex process that creates a small amount of energy in the form of molecules of ATP and NADH. Basically the cell uses these molecules as ways to store energy, sort of like little batteries that can be plugged in and used when energy is needed. Once glycolysis is complete a couple of things can happen.

The most likely (in our bodies, anyway) thing to happen next is that the pyruvate enters the citric acid cycle. This is a really complex circle of reactions that take the pyruvate and break it down into carbon dioxide and water. It takes place in the mitochondria in our cells and whether it happens or not is decided by whether there is oxygen available or not.

If there isn't oxygen available (either because this is happening in a muscle that can't get oxygen quickly enough or because we're talking about yeast or bacteria), alternatively cells can use fermentation, which creates a lot of waste products--lactic acid in the case of your muscles, and which is why they become sore after hard work, as well as what happens from the bacteria in yogurt, and alcohol in the case of yeast, and people drink the waste products.

Assuming that the citric acid cycle happens, a few more energy molecules (ATP, NADH, and FADH2) are created. But the real energy pay-off is from the third part of the respiration process. This is called oxidative phosphorylation which breaks down the hydrogen from the glucose (or whatever) into electrons and protons (which is all hydrogen is, an electron and a proton) and sends the electrons along an electron transport chain in the membrane of the mitochondrion (the singular of mitochonria) and pumps the protons back and forth through the membrane. The whole process of the electrons travelling along the transport system reminds me of electricity (ie, electrons flowing through a wire). And the process creates a whole lot of ATP, which is what powers all the work your cells do.

Now here's what keeps it going. At the end of that transport chain is a molecule of oxygen. Oxygen is, in this case, the electron acceptor--it's what attracts the electrons and keeps them flowing through the transport chain. I think of it almost like a magnet--it strongly attracts the electrons and keeps the whole thing running. When the electrons and protons arrive, they combine back to hydrogen and then combine with the oxygen to form water (H2O). Then you pee out the extra water (and breathe out the carbon dioxide created in the citric acid cycle).

I've quoted a couple of times the line that "you can only live 3 minutes without air, you can live 3 days without water, and you can live 3 weeks without food." (See Air, 5/7/09, and Water, 5/10/09.) We need water to keep everything fluid in our bodies. Here is why we need food and air. We need food for those molecules of glucose (etc) to start the process of cellular respiration. And we need air to supply the oxygen to finish the process of cellular respiration. And, as you can tell by the fact that we can make it three weeks without food, but only three minutes without air, we really need that oxygen.

So, now that you know why we need oxygen, another question is, where does the oxygen come from? That's the topic of my next post.

Quote of the Day: "...When your muscles are doing lots of work, they need lots of ATP. Your cells make ATP by doing cellular respiration. In order to make ATP, you need oxygen to accept electrons at your electron transport chain. So, as you use up your ATP in your muscles, you breathe faster to bring in more oxygen, so you can have more oxygen in you mitochondia to accept more electrons, to make more ATP. This is why you breathe.
"Everything you already knew about breathing, such as bringing oxygen to your lungs and having your red blood cells carry it around your body, is all true, but that's really more about how you get oxygen to your cells, not why your cells need it. The why is all about electron transport chains. Really. And if you're denied oxygen for some reason, you die because no oxygen = no final electron acceptor = no ATP = no cellular work = cells cease to function = death." - René Fester Kratz

Walking Away

The world is in a mess, yet what is offered to us--at least the priviledged ones in developed countries--is a garden of consumer delights. Maybe the TVs and junk food and luxury items from around the world and computers and McMansions and SUVs, etc, etc, etc, will distract us from noticing all the pain and suffering around us, as well as the fact that we are making the earth unlivable and we are running out of the fossil fuels that make it all possible. (See What We Need and Don't Need, 9/4/08, as well as Peak Everything, 7/20/08.)

But even those who notice feel caught by this society. What else can we do? We can organize protests, we can try to fix the worst of the stuff, we can try to destroy this oppressive society, we can try to create a revolution.

Or another possibility is that we could just walk away from all this. I have seen this suggested by John Michael Greer (see A Magical Way of Thinking, 8/3/08, and The Archdruid Report, 8/5/08), by Daniel Quinn (see Beyond Civilization, 1/3/11), and by David Korten (I hope in the future to write a post on his book, The Great Turning). Just don't participate in this society. Create something new, something to replace it, something that doesn't use as many resources and something that doesn't exploit people. Something small and local. Something simple, egalitarian, communal, and sustainable. (See Interconnections, 10/8/08.)

Walk away from all we don't like about this society. Walk away from corporate capitalism, patriarchy, white privilege, and that garden of consumer delights. Walk toward a new world--not knowing exactly what it will be like but believing we can create it. Walk away, deciding we want a world that works for everyone, and that's what we are walking toward.

Ursula Le Guin wrote a short story, "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas", in which she imagined an urban paradise, which she called a 'city of happiness', where all seems wonderful, utopian--but the happiness is maintained by torturing one small child in a basement somewhere, and every inhabitant of the city learns of this as they come of age. Most, somehow, rationalize this as important for the well-being of everyone else, but the story ends by focusing on the few who can't. Some of these just get up and walk out Omelas, this 'city of happiness.'

Quote of the Day: "They leave Omelas, they walk ahead into the darkness, and they do not come back. The place they go towards is a place even less imaginable to most of us than the city of happiness. I cannot describe it at all. It is possible that it does not exist. But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas." - Ursula K. Le Guin

Survival Resources 10: Safe, Clean Water

When I was writing about 'Needs', I did a post on Water (5/10/09) where I mentioned 'the rule of three': "you can only live 3 minutes without air, you can live 3 days without water, and you can live 3 weeks without food." Recently I repeated a similar rule in my post on Wilderness Survival (Survival Resources 8, 3/11/11), "A person can go a few minutes without air, a few days without water, and a few weeks without food..." What these rules don't tell you is that if you do drink water and it's contaminated, you could be very sick for several days, or even die.

Unless you can figure out a way of capturing rainwater in a container that is absolutely clean, then the water you are drinking may well contain stuff that's really not good for you. The issue isn't so much about finding clean water; the issue is how to clean the water you have so it is safe and drinkable.

There are two ways water can be contaminated, and so there are two different ways to clean it. The first way that water can be contaminated is by water borne pathogens. There are many organisms that live in water that can cause diarrhea or worse.

A major method for treating infected water is called SODIS or solar water disinfection. This method uses clear plastic (PET or polyethylene terephthalate) bottles which are filled to three-quarters with the water in question, shaken (to aerate), and then completely filled. Water that is turbid (not clear) should be filtered until clear before doing this. The bottle should be placed at an angle on a reflective metal surface (a corrugated metal roof is ideal) for six hours on a sunny or partly cloudy day, or for two whole days if the day is mostly to completely cloudy. This method is used on a world wide basis for safe drinking water.

The second source of contaminants for water is chemical--heavy metals, organic compounds, and even the chlorine that municipalities add as a method of water purification. The question of the health hazards of chlorine is controversial. The American Chemistry Council insists that the amount added to drinking water is safe, but other sources (especially from companies that sell water filters) disagree. Wikipedia notes: "Disinfection by chlorination can be problematic, in some circumstances. Chlorine can react with naturally occurring organic compounds found in the water supply to produce compounds known as disinfection byproducts (DBPs). The most common DBPs are trihalomethanes (THMs) and haloacetic acids (HAAs). Due to the potential carcinogenicity of these compounds, drinking water regulations across the developed world require regular monitoring of the concentration of these compounds in the distribution systems of municipal water systems." The woman who taught me water and soil testing when I took RUST (see my post on RUST, 7/13/10) was adamant about the dangers of carcinogenic substances in chlorinated water.

SODIS is no help with chemical contaminations--here some type of filter is needed. The most common is some sort of 'charcoal filter'--the commonly sold Britta filters are an example--and there are many more expensive, sophisticated types out there.

The combination of using SODIS to disinfect the water and a filter to get rid of chemicals should result in safe, drinkable water. There are other methods that work as well (such as solar stills). For more information on making sure water is safe, see the chapter on Water in When Technology Fails by Matthew Stein. (I reviewed When Technology Fails on 12/13/10 at the beginning of this series.)

(I want to thank my friends at DIO Skillshare for giving me much of this information.)


Quote of the Day: "Until roughly ten years ago, no one ever considered it unsafe to drink directly from mountain streams. You could stretch out on the bank of a high mountain meadow creek and just push your face into the water to drink. ... But no longer can we ... drink even a drop before purifying it without running the risk of getting sick." - Kathleen Meyer

Scarcity and Abundance

In my last post (Win/Win), I wrote about needing an Abundance Mentality and quoted Stephen Covey on the difference between 'the Scarcity Mentality' and 'the Abundance Mentality'. Yet I was aware as I wrote it that six posts earlier I wrote about impending collapse. (See Collapse, 7/5/10, for more on this.) How can I talk about having an Abundance Mentality when I've just said that affluence is over, we've passed not only 'peak oil' but 'peak everything' (for more on this, see my posts on Peak Oil, 7/18/08, and Peak Everything, 7/20/08), and the economy is slowly collapsing?

I think that the big question is what kind of 'abundance' and what kind of 'scarcity' are we talking about? In my post on Peak Everything I mentioned that Richard Heinberg sees declines in not only oil, and coal, and uranium, but "population, grain production, arable land, wild fish harvests, fresh water, climate stability, and yearly extraction of copper, zinc, platinum, silver, and gold". But he also points out that there are things that aren't going to peak, such as "community, cooperation, ingenuity, artistry, ... intergenerational solidarity, personal autonomy, leisure time, happiness..." In fact, some of these things may increase, if having less material goods means we decide spend less time trying to accumulate stuff and social status, and more time building relationships. What I referred to as 'the Four Gardeners of the Great Turning' (Love, Compassion, Joy, and Serenity) and 'Their Four Offspring' (Patience, Forgiveness, Generosity, and Healing) will not be affected by peak oil, climate change, or economic crisis. (See my posts The Four Gardeners, 2/14/10, and And Their Four Offspring, 2/24/10.) An Abundance Mentality sees all these things as overflowing.

And why not? In some ways these are more important than many material things and we really won't run out of them.

This is not to say that there aren't material things that we do need. I spent months last year trying to enumerate our real needs. (See my series of posts on Needs, beginning with Looking at Needs, 5/4/09, and ending with Our Needs: One Last Look, 9/19/09.) Take food for example. Many writers see food shortages coming as the oil that fuels our transportation system (not to mention the fertilizers, pesticides, and tractors many farmers use to grow the food) begins getting more and more expensive. Yet we could prioritize growing food and there are lots of possible ways we could make sure everyone gets fed. (See for example my posts on Feeding Ourselves in the Future, 7/24/08, Food (Soil and Seeds), 5/13/09, and Biointensive, 2/10/10.)

Gandhi claimed that, “Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed.” And this may be the real point. Having an Abundance Mentality isn't the same as trying to get more, more, more. Having an Abundance Mentality is really more about being satisfied with what we have and what we really need, and working to make sure that everybody gets what they need. Love isn't going to run out--in fact, as Malvina Reynolds puts it: "Love is something if you give it away, You end up having more." And we can have an abundance of material things as well, if we make our needs few and we are willing to share. And much of what is going to become scarce is things we don't really need anyway: McMansions, SUVs, giant screen TVs and home entertainment centers, etc.

I think that cultivating an Abundance Mentality begins when you realize what real abundance is.


Quote of the Day: "Our terrible affluence is at the root of your current crisis. Somehow most people in the rich world have gotten the impression that we're not here to care about others or do good work but to get 'ahead' and accumulate stuff. Most of our energy use goes to make us a bit more comfortable, not to meet essential needs. Perhaps the most important work we can do is to distinguish between wants and needs, and to find something besides consumption to value and put at the center of our lives. My suggestion is that we put our hope for the future there, and begin to live our lives as though we hold the world--and our particular piece of it--in trust for future generations." - Sharon Astyk

Feeding Each Other

Last week, one of my housemates had a guest at dinner, a young woman who lives and works down south. She was involved with lots of social justice projects, many involving food. At the end of the meal, she made a comment (which I saw as both a reference to the meal and a reference to her work) about how nice it was that we got to 'feed each other'.

Last Friday, I got to be part of helping with a meal prepared by Hearty Meals for All, a group in Somerville, MA, that serves nutritious meals to whomever comes in. Earlier this month, I also helped with a meal prepared by some of the local co-ops for a homeless coalition. I've talked a lot about food as one of our most basic needs. (See for example my posts on Feeding Ourselves in the Future, 7/24/08, and Food (Soil and Seeds), 5/13/09.) Most of my post have been about growing food (most recently Kale, Carrots, and Chard, 3/17/10, and Gardening as Social Change, 5/7/10) but there is something to the idea of just feeding people, particularly those who need it.

When I lived up in Brattleboro a few years ago, I was part of their annual tradition of preparing a Thanksgiving dinner for everyone in the town who wanted to come. Homeless folks wandered in and I've heard that former Bratt residents drove in from New York in their Volvos and Saabs. Volunteers brought meals to housebound folks as well as people (like police and firefighters) who needed to work that day. I enjoyed every minute of it.

I have been inspired by two groups that combine a radical (pretty much anarchist) analysis of society with the work of serving others: Food Not Bombs (the Boston Chapter is having its 30th anniversary celebration soon) and the Catholic Worker Movement (our local affiliate is Haley House). Few people would lump these two groups together but I see them as very similar in spite of the fact that one is a secular group and the other is very spiritually oriented.

I believe that we need to make sure that everyone is getting their real needs met and one of the most basic of those needs is food. Growing food is essential, but feeding each other is wonderful.


Quote of the Day: "There is a lot that happens around the world we cannot control. We cannot stop earthquakes, we cannot prevent droughts, and we cannot prevent all conflict, but when we know where the hungry, the homeless and the sick exist, then we can help." - Jan Schakowsky

Threshold

I am currently in the middle of a reading jag. Work has been quiet, I am commuting by train rather than bike, and I am currently off from work for the holidays. It means I have a lot of time to read and so I am. I am reading books on ecology, soil science, systems thinking, social transformation, Buddhism, you name it... So expect a lot of book reviews in the upcoming weeks.

Jim is an interesting guy that I am getting to know. He has a scientific background and wide
ranging interests (though a lot of it is focused on grazing and soil), so when I saw him with a
book a while ago, I asked him what he was reading. The book that he showed me was Threshold by Thom Hartmann. I hadn't heard of Thom Hartman, though apparently he's written a lot of books and is a radio personality. When I looked the book up in the library catalog it had a review attached that claimed "What begins as skillful (and scary) prognostications about climate change's impact devolve into an unfocused mishmash..." It made it sound very new agey, but what the heck.

Hartmann begins the book by stating he sees us at three 'thresholds': an ecological crisis, an
economic crisis, and a population crisis. He then claims that what brought us here were four
mistakes: 1) The belief that we are separate from nature, 2) The belief that our economic system is 'divine' and separate from us, 3)The belief that men should run the world and women are their property, and 4) The belief that 'the best way to influence people is through fear rather than through the power of love, compassion, or support.' (So far the only thing I would challenge is belief 3 which I think should be extended to include all cases where a group of people are defined as superior to other people--whites over people of color, heterosexuals over queer folk, Christians over nonChristians, etc, etc, as well as the stratifications of economic inequality.)

The introduction to the book takes place in Darfur where Hartmann discusses Maslow's hierarchy of needs (see my post of 9/2/08) and posits what he calls Maslow's Threshold--before we can move forward we need to at least make sure that everyone's Physiological and Safety Needs are met.

Hartmann then goes into depth discussing each of the three 'thresholds' and four 'mistakes'
outlined two paragraphs above, devoting a chapter to each of these. He sees our industrial system as resembling cancer (an insight I've had) and talks about the need for a 'circular and sustainable way of life'. He states that "those cultures that most embrace the largest number of their people in an egalitarian and democratic way... are the ones that have the highest quality of life." He notes "Every culture in the past that experienced the cataclysmic consequences of its dominator... behavior and survived went on to transform itself into a cooperator... culture." And he sites studies that show "...that animals will always choose democracy over despotism..." (In other words, the group, not some individual animal, decides.) He concludes this section by stating: "Those who advocate a dog-eat-dog... approach to economics and governance are advocating, essentially, cancer in our body politic. They are ignoring the surrounding environment, which demands a balanced, homeostatic, and altruistic culture." (Sounds good to me.)

The next section of the book focuses on some alternatives, looking at the Danish state as an example of a place that gets it right; contrasting the Maori culture which, Hartmann claims, used up all its resources on hunting everything to extinction and had descended into cannibalism, with the people of New Caledonia who had 'developed a democratic, egalitarian culture.' (According to Hartmann the difference is that the Maori had been on New Zealand for 700 years and had come to their crisis point, the people of New Caledonia had been there for 3,500 years and had already come through a similar crisis.) And he concludes this section by looking at an ancient Peruvian city that had a peaceful society for a thousand years.

The subtitles from Hartmann's final chapter sum up his ideas for changing things: 'Recovering a Culture of Democracy', 'Reunite Us with Nature', 'Create an Economy Modeled on Biology', 'Balance the Power of Women and Men', and 'Influence People by Helping Them Rather Than Bombing Them'. While the details of his solutions are not radical enough for me (he doesn't really challenge capitalism and nationalism), I would hardly call it New Agey or 'an unfocused mishmash'. (Maybe the reviewer didn't like the fact that Hartmann didn't offer a single solution to all the problems...) Of course, I think that my quartet of Simplicity, Equality, Community, and Sustainability are direct answers to the four 'mistakes'--but if you've been reading this blog a while, I'm sure you knew that. Still, this is a worthwhile book with some good analysis and good ideas on how to change things. I think it's worth a read.


Quote of the Day: "Our goal must be to bring all our own people--and then the rest of the world, in each culture's own way--above Maslow's threshold of safety and security so they can seriously engage in the egalitarian and liberal concepts of democracy and survivability. Whatever country, religion, organization, or culture that does that will then have the minds and hearts of the people, and can drive from the bottom up the kinds of change that will bring stability, freedom, peace, and sustainability to the world....
"Now saving the world is your work, too. Tag--you're it!" - Thom Hartmann

The Cost of Homelessness

Today is National Homeless Persons' Memorial Day. There will be vigils through out the country commemorating those who have died while being homeless. Through Bloggers Unite, blogs across the web will post something about homelessness.

A few weeks ago, I was at a rally in Boston. There were speakers and people singing but, although it was only around 30 degrees, the wind chill was fierce. My hands and feet began feeling cold to the point of being painful as I was standing there listening. A woman got up and spoke about how climate change was affecting people in the inner city. She mentioned that people weren't worrying about the environment when they had to decide between paying for food or heat. I thought about that for a moment and suddenly I was aware that, frozen as I was, I could go home when the rally was done and warm up. I thought about all the homeless people who have nowhere to go in this awful weather, and how many of them were actually freezing to death as I was just suffering temporarily.

My housemate just returned from Boston as I started writing this. She had passed a heating grate near Boston Common with metal spikes on it, apparently to prevent homeless people from sleeping there. She was outraged and came home and made a wooden cross that she wrote 'RIP Homeless People' on and went back there and put the cross over the grate to make it obvious what the city was doing.

Too many people have died because we don't care enough to make sure that everyone has a home. What will it take to change that?

How can we create a world where everyone has shelter, where everyone can be warm, where everyone has enough to eat? How can we create a world where, instead of McMansions, SUVs and plasma screen TVs, everyone's real needs are met? Everyone. The world over. Starting right here.


Quote of the Day: "There's no such thing as a natural death when you're living on the streets. It is just plain dangerous to be homeless." - Michaelann Bewsee

Our Needs: One Last Look

On 9/2/08 I published a post on 'The Hierachy of Needs' and on 9/4/08 I published a post on 'What We Need and Don't Need'. In a sense, this series grew out of those posts. I began on 5/4/09 with a post entitled 'Looking at Needs'. I listed forty-three different needs and now have published a post about each of them.

In retrospect, I think I may have missed a few. Clothing comes to mind--no matter what you might think about a clothing-optional lifestyle, you can't survive in the winter (at least here in New England) without clothes--unless you never left your house! I probably missed a few others. (Feel free to let me know if you find something I didn't cover.)

I don't think I missed very many needs however, and my point is, this is what we need to focus on. As I mentioned in my last post, there are a lot of so-called 'needs' that the capitalist advertising world wants you to believe that you have (from you 'need' this new deodorant to you 'need' a new car or wardrobe or mcmansion). These are what I was talking about when I wrote about 'What We... Don't Need' last September.

So, the question is: how can we pull ourselves out of a system that creates artificial 'pseudo-needs' and how can we meet, not only our own real needs, but everyone's real needs? This is what I am talking about when I say I am *Offering Some Tools for Creating a World that Works for Everyone *. A world that works for everyone is a world that meets everyone's needs. I hope that my outline of what those needs are will be helpful trying to figure out how to meet them.


Quote of the Day: "What they are all somehow attempting is to break through... the cycles of destruction and despair in order to imagine, remember and create ways of living that correspond to our deepest needs." - Helen Forsey

Freedom

In a sense, it's fitting that Freedom is the last need on this list, because in many ways it is a summation of many of the other needs on this list. As someone pointed out, there is freedom from and freedom to. Many of my earliest posts in this series could be looked at as freedoms from. My posts on water, food, and shelter were also posts on freedom from thirst, hunger, and homelessness. My posts in June about 'Protection from...' could also be seen as 'Freedom from...' My recent posts on Nature, Spirituality, Challenges, Creativity, and Identity, could be seen as posts on 'Freedom to...' posts. Freedom to find our place in nature, explore our spiritual connection, take on challenges, be creative, and be more of who we are.

Freedom may be last on this list but it is first in the minds of many people, both on the right (Libertarians) and the left (from Liberals, who share more than the initial 'liber'--Latin for freedom--with Libertarians, to Anarchists, who were once known as Libertarian Socialists). I certainly think that freedom is a need, and one that I am aware many people have died for. Liberation (there's that 'liber' prefix again) struggles have been fought around the world. The struggle of the civil rights movement was awash in cries for freedom from the Freedom Rides in 1961 to the Freedom March in 1966 to the simple chant "Freedom Now" and the song, "Oh, Freedom". But Audre Lorde reminds us "Not to believe that freedom can belong to any one group of us without the others also being free." Or as the slogan goes, "No one is free while others are oppressed." (Which I found attributed to both Martin Luther King and Albert Einstein.) Freedom is something we all need to achieve together.

But it gets confused with individual freedom. Milton and Rose Friedman entitled their book on the 'Free Market' system, Free to Choose, which I referred to as 'Free to Exploit'. It's not freedom if it takes away from the needs of anyone else. It isn't freedom if it hurts or hinders another person. It's not freedom if it restricts the freedom of another.

Personally, I believe that if we focused on meeting everyone's basic needs (as I've outline in this series) and paid no attention to advertising's 'created needs', we would feel very free indeed.


Resources:
Alberto Abadie, "Poverty, Political Freedom, and the Roots of Terrorism"--A paper which shows (among other things) that countries with a 'moderate' level of freedom are more prone to terrorism than countries with either a great deal of freedom or very little freedom
Francis Moore Lappé and Joseph Collins, Food First--Contains a chapter on 'Food Versus Freedom' where they demolish the myth that feeding everyone would mean a restriction on freedom; the essence of this chapter is also repeated in the authors' book, World Hunger: Twelve Myths
Libertarian Socialism--An explanation about what Libertarian Socialism is along with how it differs from both 'Libertarians' and authoritarian socialism
A S Neill, Freedom, Not License!--This was the book that got me thinking about the differences between real freedom and things that harm others


Quote of the Day: "Freedom is like air, you breathe it in and never think of it until it runs out." - Anonymous

Identity

Identity is about who we are. Wikipedia, in trying to pin down Identity, uses terms like "whatever makes an entity definable and recognizable" and "an individual's comprehension of him or herself as a discrete, separate entity". It's about what makes us unique, what makes us, us.

In one sense we all have multiple identities. I am Moonraven when I am on this blog, but otherwise I'm not. I am male, white, middle-aged, middle-class, able-bodied, cis-gendered, bisexual, polyamorous, vegan, pagan, a bicyclist, an avid composter, a beginning gardener, and a dedicated communitarian. These are all identities that I have, but they aren't me. Identity can also refer to the essential core of who you are, your 'self' so to speak.

I agree with Thomas Szasz, "...the self is not something one finds, it is something one creates." George Bernard Shaw said something similar, "Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself." Our identities are not a given but something we make of ourselves.

Unfortunately, some people make themselves into 'Characters', sometimes almost caricatures, in order to stand out. We should think about who we want to become. If we are creating ourselves, we should think about what we are creating.

We need to be able to become who we want to be. The need is for us each to claim our own identity. But we also need to be responsible for making our identity something that benefits more than ourselves. There is work that needs to be done. How can you be the best person to do what you need to do?

(And, in the end, as the Buddhists say, we need to be able to let go of our identities and just be.)


Resources:
Eric Olson, "Personal Identity"--A philosophical survey of the concept of identity from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Carl Rogers and Barry Stevens, Person to Person--Barry Stevens talks about her life and her reactions to papers by Carl Rogers and others; the subtitle is 'The Problem of Being Human' and the book explores the issue of what it means to be a person
Self: The Prime Mover--A page of thoughts and definitions around the idea of the self
Sunada, "If there is no self, then who’s sitting here?"--Meditations on the Buddhist concept of 'No Self'; becoming who you are by letting go of your identity...

Quote of the Day: "The one person the world seems hell-bent on my not living with is me." - Barry Stevens

Creativity

Where would we be without creativity? Although creativity is important in the arts, it's also essential in problem solving and political strategy. We will need it if we want to accomplish any real social change.

It seems like a simple thing but creativity (as Wikipedia points out) has been studied by several branches of psychology, by people from philosophy, history, economics, design research, business, and management among other perspectives. Creativity is about flexibility, it's about new ways of seeing things.

Creativity is also something, as Richard Heinberg points out, that we have in abundance and isn't going away. (See my post on 'Peak Everything' from 7/20/08. And note, he doesn't actually say 'creativity'--he says 'ingenuity' and 'artistry'--but that sounds like creativity to me.)

Creativity can be a skill that you learn and practice. It can be a way of looking at the world and anything that comes up. And it truly is something we need more of--particularly as we are creating a simpler, more sustainable society.


Resources:
Karen Kersting, "What exactly is creativity?"--An article that summarizes some of what has been learned from a psychological perspective
Karl Paulnack Welcome Address--My friend Susan (aka ethicalsusan) told me about this and it's wonderful; an explanation of the importance and essential survival value of music and the arts
Kendra Van Wagner, "How to Boost Your Creativity"--The subtitle says it all: '20 Tips from Psychology for Boosting Creativity'

I'm going to take the opportunity to list my four favorite books on writing as a creative endeavor, which I regard as a right brain (brainstorming, letting it all flow out)/left brain (editing, ruthlessly cleaning it all up) activity. My two favorite right brain books are Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down The Bones and Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird. My two favorite left brain books are Theodore Cheney, Getting the Words Right and Noah Lukeman, The First Five Pages.

Quote of the Day: "Creativity comes from trust. Trust your instincts. And never hope more than you work." - Rita Mae Brown

Challenges

We all need rest and relaxation, and sleep, and connections with nature, and spiritual connections, but we also need challenges--something to work toward or against, something to stretch ourselves with.

This is related to the concept of 'eustress', a stress that enhances our functioning.

As far as I am concerned, living simply and sustainably (not to mention equally and communally) are enough challenges for those of us trying to do it, that I don't think we need much more. But let's challenge ourselves to really do it.


Resources:
Crunchy Chicken--A very popular blog that always has challenges; currently she is promoting what she calls her 'Cloth Wipe Challenge', where she's challenging readers to use cloths instead of toilet paper...
No Impact Man--Writer Colin Beavan challenged himself and his family to live off-the-grid, eating locally, and producing no waste for a year (in the middle of NYC!), and they did; on his new website, The No Impact Project, Beavan challenges visitors to do it for a week
Riot 4 Austerity--I blogged about this on 9/28/08 (the post is called 'Riot!'); the 'riot' has been over for over a year but I think it was a great challenge; check out their FAQs for more info

Quote of the Day: "A happy life consists not in the absence, but in the mastery of hardships." - Helen Keller

Spiritual Connections

Another deep need is to connect to something beyond us. I am calling this the need for spiritual connection.

Here it gets tricky. Spirituality means different things to different people. I'm a believer in spiritual diversity and in supporting people who believe very different things. I believe that each person has to find their own spiritual path--and our paths can be very different from each other. I also believe that this means that even atheists, agnostics, and secular humanists have spiritual needs and a spiritual path--and that path is often right in front of them. Often they can't see it because the word 'spiritual' gets in the way.

Even more controversial is that I don't believe that belief in such things as God, heaven, reincarnation, the Goddess, magic, etc, are necessary to have a spiritual connection--although I am not denying the central importance of each of these things for different people. The truth is, I have trouble believing in any of these things (I sometimes refer to myself as 'belief challenged') and yet I can see a spiritual path for myself. My friend, ethicalsusan, who is affiliated with the Ethical Society Without Walls, dislikes being called a nonbeliever. She points out she believes in many things, including people, relationships, and the need for doing good in the world.

I once heard Stephen Levine speak. At one point someone asked him how he defined spirituality. His definition has stayed with me. He simply said, "...openness to the unknown." This is close to my way of approaching spirituality. This is what I've felt gazing at the night sky and realizing how small I was in a universe full of mystery.

I want to be clear that I am not challenging anyone's spiritual beliefs. Just because I don't believe in something doesn't mean that's what's true. I respect each person's beliefs. You could be right; I could be wrong. I am simply trying to find my own way the best that I can.

And that is what I am encouraging each of us to do. We all have needs for spiritual connection. I hope that we can support one another in finding our own path.


Resources:
Since I believe in the need for spiritual diversity, an inclusive list of spiritual resources could fill pages and pages. I am going to briefly list my own sources of spiritual influence. I invite you to mention yours.

Sourcebooks: the Bible, the Tao Te Ching, The Teachings of the Compassionate Buddha, and Zen Flesh, Zen Bones

Writers that have influenced me over the years: Thomas Merton, Teilhard de Chardin, Joyce Rupp, Martin Buber, Idries Shah, Ram Dass, Stephen Levine, Pema Chödrön, Starhawk, T Thorn Coyle, and Luisah Teish

Quote of the Day: "...spirituality is an intrinsic dimension of human consciousness... the Greek concept of pneuma meant breath or spirit or soul, and spirit comes from the Latin root for 'to breathe'. From one perspective, we realize that we need food, shelter, and clothing; from another that some sort of relationship among people, animals, and the Earth is necessary; from another that we must determine our identity as creatures not only of our immediate habitat but of the world or the universe..." - Charlene Spretnak

Connecting with Nature

One of the most healing, relaxing, recuperative things we can do is to connect with nature. There is a real need for us, particularly those of us in the city, to find ways of connecting with the earth around us.

It might be as simple as looking out a window at the trees swaying in the breeze. It might be a walk through a woodland trail, with no sight of human habitation around. It might be watching a mountain stream, laughing as it flows over rocks and stones. It might be gazing at the great ocean as it surges over the shore, and seeing how it extends to the horizon and beyond as the sea goes on and on and on. Or it could be lying in a meadow at night, staring up at the stars, and realizing how small this huge earth is in the infinity of space. (I will talk more about this experience in my next post.)

It doesn't matter. For each of us there is a need, beyond our connections to each other, to be connected to nature and the earth itself. In the machinations of this society it is easy to forget that we come from the earth and return to the earth, that this very earth supports us--even if it's buried under asphalt and concrete and linoleum and glass and steel.

This is truly returning to our roots and each one of us needs to see that we are a part of nature and not apart from nature. We need to feel that connection because that connection will heal us--and we can't be whole without it.



Resources:
Tom Brown, Tom Brown's Field Guide to Living with the Earth--It seems a bit hokey in parts but the introduction and first chapter ('Earthmind') talk clearly about our need to be part of the earth around us
Chellis Glendinning, My Name is Chellis & I'm in Recovery from Western Civilization--I talked at length about this book in my post of 12/26/08, One with Nature 1: Recovery
Starhawk, The Earth Path--I've mentioned this book in a number of my early posts in this segment but it is a clear call to connect with nature along with some steps for doing so; I wrote about The Earth Path in my post of 12/28/08, One with Nature 2: The Path
Henry Thoreau, Walden--A friend of mine told me that her avid love of nature began with reading Thoreau in high school; a 'Thoreauvian' noted that this book influenced the national park system, the hippie revolution, the environmental movement, and the wilderness movement among many other things

Quote of the Day: "...we are not separate from nature but in fact are nature. ... For we are part of the living earth, and to connect with her is to connect with the deepest parts of ourselves." - Starhawk

Sleep

More healing than rest and relaxation is sleep. And so, in some ways, this post is way out of sequence. I pointed out under transportation that it was so much less important than eating and that was why it was so far from the beginning of this sequence. By that logic, this post, number 37, makes sleep sound really unimportant.

Actually, in many ways sleep belongs somewhere at the start of the needs segment, in the early posts where I was discussing physiological needs. What I did discuss there was the need for Shelter, both Temporary (5/19/09) and Permanent (5/31/09). One of the reasons for this need is to have a safe location to sleep. Indeed, people sometimes refer to this as "place to lay my head". We need to sleep and we need safe space to do it.

Both lack of sleep and too much sleep have been shown to shorten your life span. Sleep deprivation can cause multiple ill effects, including headaches, hallucinations, and hernias--not to mention traffic accidents in those foolish enough to drive while sleep deprived. According to Wikipedia, it is impossible to have complete deprivation over a long period of time because the body lapses into episodes of microsleep.

The average person needs seven to eight hours of good, sound sleep. Caffeine (from coffee, tea, sodas, or chocolate), nicotine, and alcohol can interfere with sleep--in other words, the stuff people usually use in this society. A great quote from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke claims: "The widespread practice of 'burning the candle at both ends' in western industrialized societies has created so much sleep deprivation that what is really abnormal sleepiness is now almost the norm." This is a good example of what our crazed capitalist society is doing to people.

There is a Zen story of a master being told of someone with miraculous powers and being asked what miracles he could perform. He answered, "My miracle is that when I feel hungry I eat, and when I feel thirsty I drink." And in this society, the miracle may be that when we are tired, we actually sleep.



Resources:
Dick McLeester, Welcome to the Magic Theater--Subtitled 'A Handbook for Exploring Dreams', this is a long out of print catalog of useful information about dreams and dreaming; you might find it in a used bookstore
MedicineNet, "Your Guide to Healthy Sleep"--A simply written guide to understanding the essentials about sleep and how to take care of yourself by getting enough
National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, "Brain Basics: Understanding Sleep"--A more technical analysis of sleep
The National Sleep Foundation--Yes, there is a whole foundation devoted to studying sleep; this site contains lots of articles related to basics about sleep and new information being found out by sleep research

Also see the resources under Temporary Shelter (5/19/09) and Permanent Shelter (5/31/09)

Quote of the Day: "No day is so bad it can't be fixed with a nap." - Carrie Snow

Recuperation, Rest, and Renewal

Recuperation, for me, is really about the healing aspects of rest and leisure. It's about recreation, play, and simply lying about, doing nothing, as methods of stress management. It's about taking the time to refresh the body and mind.

It's about the idea that we really need to take care of ourselves. We need downtime.

When I was in a political/spiritual community, we adopted the idea of Shabbat--even those of us who weren't Jewish. We really liked the idea, as workers and activists, that we needed a time to just be. While the spiritual aspects of this practice are important, the physical, mental, and emotional healing that occurs around being able to relax and just be, rather than doing all the time, is very important as well. We have to be careful not to burn ourselves out trying to change the world.

Relaxation is one of the main methods of recuperation. While there are some specific methods of relaxation (such as Progressive Muscle Relaxation and diaphragmatic breathing), just letting go and not giving into the compulsion to do something may be the most important way to do it. (I've heard the expression from meditation teachers: "Don't just do something, sit there.")

In a culture that emphasizes busyness (not to mention fear, tension, and stress), just letting yourself relax and recuperate and renew yourself is an important need.

Resources:
Kathleen Barton, "Stress-Busters: 12 Ways to Renew Yourself"--A short article listing some thoughts on how to recharge yourself
Stephen Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People--Covey's seventh habit is what he calls 'Sharpen the Saw' and subtitles: 'Principles of Balanced Self-Renewal'; he discusses physical, social/emotional, mental, and spiritual renewal and the importance of taking time to do it
Martha Davis, The Relaxation and Stress Reduction Workbook--Step-by-step instructions on techniques for relaxing the body and calming the mind
Jeanne Segal, et al, "Relaxation Techniques for Stress Relief"--A good survey of a variety of relaxation methods

Quote of the Day: "Sometimes the cure for restlessness is rest." - Colleen Wainwright