Effective Date: May, 2008
It's time to wake up from delusional complacency. As the global environmental crisis accelerates, and as our understanding of the impact of our choices on all living creatures deepens, we are challenged to rethink what we take for granted, our habits and assumptions. It is time to set a new standard for ourselves, one that seeks the convergence of humane justice, sustainability, creativity and joy. Acknowledging the paradigm of destructive consumerism, theVashonWay.com provides informational resources and tools relative to: Your Health, Health of the Environment, Food, Water, Sustainable Living, Animal Welfare, and concerned groups surrounding these and other important issues. Use this information and these tools to educate and empower yourself in preparation for a world which already requires us to make lifestyle changes to resuscitate a quality of life we've grown to expect.......... unfortunately all the while with no guarantee of life in the too near future.
Read more ...
To quote MEarth, from Garden The World - The Vashon Loop Aug 1 2008
Not A Bang, Just A Whimper
I have always imagined a spectacular end to the world - something epic, cataclysmic, something grand and dramatic - an hour long 10.5 earthquake, the swarm of F5 hurricanes, a world-wide shutdown of the power grid, or an instant ice age or at least some combination of the Rhapsody, Nuclear Armageddon, and the Hopi Day of Purification.
Lately, I’m thinking that the way we have nickel and dimed the Earth to death, we may not deserve such a grandiose end. Instead of some fiery high-speed crash, I am starting to think more along the lines of just running out of gas along a deserted stretch of back-road NoWhere.
I am imagining conditions under which more and more places in the country begin to look like New Orleans or Chehalis and the government doesn’t have the time and money to clean it up; a time when the economy comes crashing down and the whole country is owned by China and Dubai, a time when food becomes so expensive to raise and transport that the local grocery store is empty and the fields and woods are full of hungry foragers, a time when electricity becomes more intermittent and more of a luxury than a necessity, a time when fewer and fewer people drive gasoline-powered vehicles and the ones who do are looked upon with increasing suspicion, a time when feral dogs - the ones that have escaped being eaten - roam the land preying on the careless, and a time when the business of being human, once so imperial, imposing and important, gradually winds down in shallow spiral.
As Ran Prieur puts it; “It won’t be like falling off a cliff, more like rolling down a rocky hill. There won’t be any clear Before, During, or After.”
There is another vision of the future, one I would certainly prefer to see and one we are definitely capable of forging, a future in which locally, ecologically produced power becomes the norm, where pedal power and eco-villages come to the fore and fields of organic food surround self-sufficient little communities, where locally-produced bio-diesel powers our trucks, where pollution is considered a sin, as is waste, where everything from string to humanure is used and reused and re-reused until every last erg of usefulness is extracted before it is returned to the Earth.
A future where neighbors come together more and more to share food and fuel, where the Saturday market turns into a barter fair, where schools and nursing homes grow their own food with extra to trade, where new tools are fabricated from one of the few resources left - abandoned cars - where teams of double-diggers roam from house to house converting lawns into bio-intensive vegetable gardens and there is a thriving trade in Buff Orpington Chickens and Durock Pigs.
Of course, that second vision of the future presupposes some preparations and foresight on our part and I don't today have as much hope for that future as I do some days.
We can no longer deny that peak oil has come and gone and, likely, so has peak food, peak water, and peak money. None of it will ever get cheaper or more plentiful. People who do not learn to become more self-sufficient in the coming years will become those most rudely surprised on the morning the alarm doesn't ring and then just never rings again. An unnatural lifestyle has created unrealistic expectations and the status quo will not tell us the hard truth. I anticipate many businesses to have End of the World Clearance sales - no disrespect, that's just how we do it.
The biggest lie civilization tells us now is that things will get better, that our current problems are just a tiny setback and, any day now, everything will be fine. We would be well to accept the fact that any improvement will be temporary and any lull will not be an end to the war but merely a momentary cease-fire.
I'm afraid it doesn't really matter who is elected president - not in any way substantive to our true long-term situation. Some politicians will help a little, and some will harm a little but it's all going down soon anyway. MRSA, flesh-eating bacteria, avian flu, killer bees? All are waiting to have their turn nibbling away at us and our current lifestyle won't help. The Black Death killed about one-third of Europe, and those people ate organic, whole foods and got plenty of exercise.
No, I don't so much see a grand exit for us, just a steady erosion of what we take for granted, a wearing away that we just assume is "how it is," and we scarcely notice until it's all just gone.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
To access some of the documents available on theVashonWay.com, you may need a copy of Adobe Acrobat reader.
If you don’t have this program installed on your computer, you can download a copy for free.
It's time to wake up from delusional complacency. As the global environmental crisis accelerates, and as our understanding of the impact of our choices on all living creatures deepens, we are challenged to rethink what we take for granted, our habits and assumptions. It is time to set a new standard for ourselves, one that seeks the convergence of humane justice, sustainability, creativity and joy. Acknowledging the paradigm of destructive consumerism, theVashonWay.com provides informational resources and tools relative to: Your Health, Health of the Environment, Food, Water, Sustainable Living, Animal Welfare, and concerned groups surrounding these and other important issues. Use this information and these tools to educate and empower yourself in preparation for a world which already requires us to make lifestyle changes to resuscitate a quality of life we've grown to expect.......... unfortunately all the while with no guarantee of life in the too near future.
Read more ...
To quote MEarth, from Garden The World - The Vashon Loop Aug 1 2008
Not A Bang, Just A Whimper
I have always imagined a spectacular end to the world - something epic, cataclysmic, something grand and dramatic - an hour long 10.5 earthquake, the swarm of F5 hurricanes, a world-wide shutdown of the power grid, or an instant ice age or at least some combination of the Rhapsody, Nuclear Armageddon, and the Hopi Day of Purification.
Lately, I’m thinking that the way we have nickel and dimed the Earth to death, we may not deserve such a grandiose end. Instead of some fiery high-speed crash, I am starting to think more along the lines of just running out of gas along a deserted stretch of back-road NoWhere.
I am imagining conditions under which more and more places in the country begin to look like New Orleans or Chehalis and the government doesn’t have the time and money to clean it up; a time when the economy comes crashing down and the whole country is owned by China and Dubai, a time when food becomes so expensive to raise and transport that the local grocery store is empty and the fields and woods are full of hungry foragers, a time when electricity becomes more intermittent and more of a luxury than a necessity, a time when fewer and fewer people drive gasoline-powered vehicles and the ones who do are looked upon with increasing suspicion, a time when feral dogs - the ones that have escaped being eaten - roam the land preying on the careless, and a time when the business of being human, once so imperial, imposing and important, gradually winds down in shallow spiral.
As Ran Prieur puts it; “It won’t be like falling off a cliff, more like rolling down a rocky hill. There won’t be any clear Before, During, or After.”
There is another vision of the future, one I would certainly prefer to see and one we are definitely capable of forging, a future in which locally, ecologically produced power becomes the norm, where pedal power and eco-villages come to the fore and fields of organic food surround self-sufficient little communities, where locally-produced bio-diesel powers our trucks, where pollution is considered a sin, as is waste, where everything from string to humanure is used and reused and re-reused until every last erg of usefulness is extracted before it is returned to the Earth.
A future where neighbors come together more and more to share food and fuel, where the Saturday market turns into a barter fair, where schools and nursing homes grow their own food with extra to trade, where new tools are fabricated from one of the few resources left - abandoned cars - where teams of double-diggers roam from house to house converting lawns into bio-intensive vegetable gardens and there is a thriving trade in Buff Orpington Chickens and Durock Pigs.
Of course, that second vision of the future presupposes some preparations and foresight on our part and I don't today have as much hope for that future as I do some days.
We can no longer deny that peak oil has come and gone and, likely, so has peak food, peak water, and peak money. None of it will ever get cheaper or more plentiful. People who do not learn to become more self-sufficient in the coming years will become those most rudely surprised on the morning the alarm doesn't ring and then just never rings again. An unnatural lifestyle has created unrealistic expectations and the status quo will not tell us the hard truth. I anticipate many businesses to have End of the World Clearance sales - no disrespect, that's just how we do it.
The biggest lie civilization tells us now is that things will get better, that our current problems are just a tiny setback and, any day now, everything will be fine. We would be well to accept the fact that any improvement will be temporary and any lull will not be an end to the war but merely a momentary cease-fire.
I'm afraid it doesn't really matter who is elected president - not in any way substantive to our true long-term situation. Some politicians will help a little, and some will harm a little but it's all going down soon anyway. MRSA, flesh-eating bacteria, avian flu, killer bees? All are waiting to have their turn nibbling away at us and our current lifestyle won't help. The Black Death killed about one-third of Europe, and those people ate organic, whole foods and got plenty of exercise.
No, I don't so much see a grand exit for us, just a steady erosion of what we take for granted, a wearing away that we just assume is "how it is," and we scarcely notice until it's all just gone.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
To access some of the documents available on theVashonWay.com, you may need a copy of Adobe Acrobat reader.
If you don’t have this program installed on your computer, you can download a copy for free.
theVashonWay
Vashon-Maury Island, WA 98070-0102
