5b. The Survivalists
Get off-grid, learn about hunting, foraging and making stuff with your hands. Stock up on tinned and dried food and bury it all in an underground bunker in the middle of nowhere. Buy guns and ammo. Get ready to shoot people and eat them.
Also known as ‘Preppers’ in the US, some of the low-tech, ‘redneck’ solutions these people provide for eg, solar showers, free hot baths, rocket stoves, underground shelters or greenhouses, natural swimming pools, eco-cooking are nothing short of brilliant. Resilience is an important part of an unstable future and if for example, all the supermarkets and shops were empty, for whatever reason’ how long could you survive? If your power went off for a week, or a month – what would you do? It is essential to consider these things and have a plan in any case.
The Moralists
When you look around, the ‘green’ choice sometimes seems just another colour of consumer capitalism. Often it is the more expensive option in a choice to buy goods. Being a ‘green consumer’ is rife with hypocrisies and although it might make for a good conscience it is still little more than a fashion statement. Somewhere along the line corporate consumerism has already hi-jacked many of the real intentions beyond being ‘green’.
Surely recycle, reduce, repair and re-use and refuse are the essence of the green message? As opposed to ‘purchase from a different source’.
Certainly there seem to be better consumer options available with green shopping, such as buying ‘Fair Trade’. But there are many people who now question just how fair any trade with third world countries can be in the context of the international banking and free trade system we have. It can’t be right to buy something cheap from a Third World country and then sell it expensive to the First World customers?
In reality to be ‘green’, one should let go of all attachment to money and close one’s bank account. In reality the green option here is local trade and exchange with local produce and without the use of money. Even the most ethical of banks is still part of an earth-wrecking system that exploits the non-renewable raw materials of the earth. This economic system is built on the fallacy that we can continue to use our capital assets, the resources of the Earth, as income in a ‘growth forever’ fantasy.
In reality, being green means letting go of your job and refusing to use petrol to go to work at all. Almost all employment is also part of the same economic system that exploits people and planet for the profit of a few, and the payment for this employment is money – which is at the heart of our problem in creating a fairer social system.
In reality, being green means not buying anything at all. It means making, growing, mending or exchanging goods and avoiding money which is taxed by governments to further their warmongering economic objectives and the objectives of their controllers, with its unavoidable side effects of environmental and planetary degradation.
In reality, being green means turning off your gas, your electricity and your water supply because the systems that deliver these to you are also entrenched in the earth destroying, monopolist systems of consumer capitalism.
Anything less is a compromise. But whose going to do that (apart from Mark Boyle)?
Promoting, even suggesting such options in today’s world is often met with stony silence. In a world controlled by fear of terrorism, any kind of extremism or radicalism is increasingly interpreted as dangerous and anti-social, a threat to the system or part of a ‘conspiracy’ based reaction. How long do you think government will take to accuse ‘Extinction Rebellion’ of economic terrorism, if people are allowed to protest again?
There aren’t many people who are actually able to be truly ‘green’. Often those whose cultures are naturally sustainable in resource terms, like the Kalahari Bushmen or the Masai, like the indigenous peoples of the Amazon Basin, Australia or North America, are persecuted and forced into unsustainable systems in which they have to earn money to provide for themselves and their families.
So a moralist will refuse to earn enough money to pay taxes. They are unlikely to have a car or own a house. They may not vote or buy stuff and stay out of consumerist cycles by not owning. They re-use and recycle as much as possible and avoid contributing any of their valuable energy to the system. Food is sourced on an ethical basis and possibly purchased by direct exchange if possible. A moralist activist might opt-out to a co-operative lifestyle, living off the land in domes, benders or mini-homes and getting by on part-time jobs.
Of course one solution is to change culture and move somewhere beautiful like Northern Thailand where people still live a spiritual life in tune with nature.
Parliament Must Die contains quotes from: A. Greenburg, M.D._Abraham Maslow_Albert Einstein _Alnoor Ladha_Andrew Gwynne _Anneke Lucas_Arthur Koestler _Arundhati Roy_Asgeir Jonsson _Barbara Max Paul Hubbard_Bertrand Russell _Bill Mollison _Buckminster Fuller_Calcida Jethá _Caroline Lucas_Charles the Great_Chief Arvol Looking Horse _Christopher Ryan_Copernicus_Daniel Christian Wahl_Daniel Pinchbeck_Darwin_David Edwards_David Holmgren _David Icke_Dieter Duhm_Donald Worster_Donnachadh McCarthy_Doreen Massey_Doris Lessing_Dr A Bartlett Giamatti _Dr Claire Wordley_Dr Jay Cullen_Dr Kathy Sykes _Dresden James_E C Lindeman_Eckhart Tolle_Edgar Cayce _Edward Snowden _Ethan C Roland _Ewen MacAskill_Galileo_Galtang and Ruge _George Monbiot_Gerald Heard _God in Genesis_Greta Thunberg_Gudrun Johnsen _Guido Dalla Casa _Gustave Le Bon_Guy Fawkes _Henry Cloud _Henryk Skolomowski_Isaac Cordal _J Eliot_Jack D Forbes_Jack Forbes_James Gordon M.D._James Lovelock _Jeremy Lent_Jeremy Rifkin_John Cleese _John Hammell_John Hilary_John Trudell_Jon Stone_Jonathan Bartley_Julian Assange_Karl Marx _Karlos Kukuburra_Ken Ward _Lee Williams _Leonard Higgins_Lierre Keith _Lord Strasburger_M Knowles_Maddy Harland _Marianne Williamson_Mark Boyle_Martin Kirk_Martin Winiecki_Masanobu Fukuoka _Matthieu Ricard_Mogens Herman Hansen _Nafeez Ahmed _Nanice Ellis_Neil Dawe_Nikola Tesla_Noam Chomsky_Olafur Hauksson _Osho_Paul Hawken_Paul Levy_Peter Joseph_Peter Macfadyen_Pope Francis_President Franklin Roosevelt _Rabindranath Tagore _Rene Descartes _Russell Brand_Safa Motesharrei _Seyyed Hossein Nasr_Sigmund Fraud_Silas Titus _Simon Mitchell_Sir David Attenborough_Sir Isaac Newton_Sir Joshua Stamp_Skip Sanders _Steve Kent _Sting_Terrence Mckenna_The Dalai Lama _Thomas Berry_Tom McKay_Tyler Durden_Walter Bradford Cannon_Wendell Berry_William Derham_Yaneer Bar-Yam
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