For the record, I prefer the term “subsistence” for the simple reason that many of us are being forced to re-examine the traditional wisdom modern Big Ag and consumerism abandoned in favor of “progress”…

Whatever the term conjures, to me it’s positive in that I have a new appreciation for the “old,” which seems to be lacking altogether in the mainstream corporate-driven machine in which there is no individual solving his own problems with his own two hands, one hand tool at a time.

I’m not eloquent and I’m often intimidated coming here because I can’t participate in the academic conversation…but just letting you know I so appreciate your thoughts…they’re fodder for many discussions between my husband and me as we plan our near futures.

For the record, I prefer the term “subsistence” for the simple reason that many of us are being forced to re-examine the traditional wisdom modern Big Ag and consumerism abandoned in favor of “progress”…

Whatever the term conjures, to me it’s positive in that I have a new appreciation for the “old,” which seems to be lacking altogether in the mainstream corporate-driven machine in which there is no individual solving his own problems with his own two hands, one hand tool at a time.

I’m not eloquent and I’m often intimidated coming here because I can’t participate in the academic conversation…but just letting you know I so appreciate your thoughts…they’re fodder for many conversations between my husband and me as we plan our near futures.

For the record, I prefer the term “subsistence” for the simple reason that many of us are being forced to re-examine the traditional wisdom modern Big Ag and consumerism abandoned in favor of “progress”…

Whatever the term conjures, to me it’s positive in that I have a new appreciation for the “old,” which seems to be lacking altogether in the mainstream corporate-driven machine in which there is no individual solving his own problems with his own two hands, one hand tool at a time.

I’m not eloquent and I’m often intimidated coming here because I’ve not had the same academic exposure, and am most times better not trying to join the conversation…but just letting you know I so appreciate your thoughts…they’re fodder for many conversations between my husband and me as we plan our near futures.

Dewey,
I think Lovelock’s problem is that he’s old, he sees the Long Walk coming up, and he translates that onto everything else. My grandmother is about the same age and has been a lifelong activist -civil rights, peace, environmental, you name it, she’s done it -and over the past few years she’s gotten more and more pessimistic. She’s now convinced that the world is going to get worse and worse until we kill ourselves and everything else off. I’m thinking about this now because I just had this disucssion with her today. Again. *sigh*

Sue ITWB- ah! Ok, I get it, and I’m familiar with that bureaucrap babble dialect- I’m pretty sure this is where Sharon got her response to the word, yes?

I think- and I’m not sure- that Bureaucrap may be almost the only dialect with that connotation- in Suburbanese, and Biznese, I think that weight is not there. We may find out.

Sara- I like “Sussy”! Neologism, which means you can start without too many preconceptions; catchy, like “hippie”. Although, it’s also a diminutive, which is likely to be taken as derogatory.

Could end up one of those words that is ok within the community, but not from outside. In any case, a good suggestion!

it has to do with that venn diagram mentioned above, personal influence here and this is the outside world where I have no leverage- and pull the pocket inside out, because that’s a lie,and the truth is out: it’s the Jungian thing about Collective Consciousness or what was Unconsciousness, it’s the Collective Meditative Inertia that will roll back the time bomb on Doom’s Day, and it has already been planted.
Picture the diagram, but put a seed ball inside it, add water, and watch the baobobs grow so fast the circle that tries to say it’s outside our influence just disintegrates!
I’m tired of fighting, I’m tired of arguing against ignorance and arrogance of the Affluenza Consumerist Addiction and the environmental rape and community genocide that feeds it. I will still go to the DEP Public Hearing, but I think the real action is in BELIEVING in the Garden, in growing soil, in growing mycelium, in growing worms, in throwing seedballs, and living in the garden and out of the rat race!! So I’m going off the grid again, and focusing on perennials, and as far as that going into space idea- it is real– creating MicroClimates, considering the same factors you would in outer space- really looking at the essential ingredients to sustaining life and the “Heart” in Silent Running– garden before all else…
and the person who says there is a chance of people misusing the land, that’s a laugh! King Coal is taking down three ridges (Mountain Ridges) a week and dumping them into the valleys!! in the most biodiverse areas aside from the Amazon Basin- check http:www.ilovemountains.org to see what I mean, or fly over on SouthWings, even if 80% of the people went and over-used the land, it is nothing compared to what they are doing by using electricity from Coal-fired plants right now- with lights, lights, city lights, traffic lights, all night lights, electric can-openers! give me a break, towel warmers! blankets! don’t let me get started, so I’m digging into the woods and living off bitter herbs until it’s either better or I think of something else, but I am done being part of the problem.

Thank you for listening.

Welcome to my world, Sharon

Discussions, especially online discussions, too often have a flight to the extremes.

“I believe in the death penalty.”
“What?! So we should execute people for jaywalking?!”
“I am against the death penalty.”
“What?! So we should just let them all go?!”

Between global apocalypse and the jet car technotopia is the sane middle ground we’re much more likely to find ourselves in. Of all solutions to our problems, none is perfect, all we can do is choose the least worse. I find myself mentioning these things again and again…

As for ‘transition’, I agree that the literal meaning of ‘change’ is useful/appropriate, but I have a negative (or at least skeptical) interpretation of it as well. I have backgrounds both in federal government employment (land management agencies) and also in the ‘human potential movement’ of the 70s-80s. In both contexts there is often much language used to suggest “wanting something to happen” rather than “it’s actually happening”. In the government bureaucracy in particular, there is a tradition of constantly announcing new approaches, which take up the time and energy of employees without actually making any useful changes in the content of the work. It’s either a make-busy technique or it’s a sequence of failed attempts to address real problems by trying something essentially the same as what didn’t work last time, but with this one tiny difference…

So ‘transition’, for me, has a ring of “positive thinking” psychobabble, on the one hand, as well as “more bureaucratic illusory nonsense” on the other.

There’s nothing wrong with the word itself, just that it’s been applied too many times to changes not actually made, that it’s started to sound fake to me. But then that’s just me, perhaps.