Waking The Dead 3

We need to be deprogrammed. Yes. So, how is this going to happen, and who is going to do it for us? Simple answer to a simple question: it's our job. I think people are doing this more, and this is the good thing about the internet. People generally have a lot more ready access to a lot more information, and it is nice to know that some of us are actually trying to exploit this. I am noticing, in Vancouver, anyway, a greater push towards progressive values and ideas. We have more people reducing their meat consumption, or going vegetarian or completely plant-based. Ofcourse, this is also making fresh produce more expensive and so again we have the problem of food for profit capitalism. This is the model that our governments have chosen, assuming, I would imagine, that they are thus acting in the best interests of Canadians. Well, certain Canadians. Conservatives and conservative swing-voters, one would imagine. We are basically limited to working within these parameters, no matter how irksome and odious. Even though I would be inclined to disagree, given the number of cars I see on the roads every day, and how often I am nearly blinded by LED headlights (which really ought to be banned as both a public safety and health hazard), I am told that car sales are generally down, and more people are more often leaving their cars at home and opting for alternative and more sustainable modes of transportation. I'm still not quite convinced. I still believe that nothing speaks so powerfully or effectively as personal example. This is why I have never deviated from living simply, not just by making a virtue our of necessity (when you are chronically poor and low-incomed it is just amazing how righteous you become). And I have also taken care to not stay quiet about how I live, or why it should be desirable and even preferable to the carbon emitting nonsense that most of us take for normal. For most of us it is possible to live well without a car and without meat, but too few are still willing to make the transition. There are of course reasons for this, or, rather, lame excuses. So, how has living simply helped shape the person who I am? Well, I'm still poor, but I don't feel poor. So maybe we have here a clue. A lot of this has to do with self-perception and values? If we do not have a developed or concrete sense of ourselves as having value that is independent of the customs, mores and attitudes of our surrounding environment, then we are going to be easy marks for consumer advertising and consumerist propaganda. Like shooting fish in a barrel. As a non-car owner, I take public transit. This helps me to see and appreciate people who are different from me, to find mature strategies for dealing with annoying people, and it allows me the opportunity to actually have the occasional conversation with a pleasant stranger, perhaps even to make a new friend. This simply does not happen when you spend almost all your time away from home and work inside a car. I also walk a lot more, good exercise, helps me manage my weight, and I can see and appreciate all kinds of interesting features of my city and the various neighbourhoods and people. Plus, I get to look at some really cool houses, gardens, trees and birds. Eating vegetarian provides all sorts of health benefits making me incredibly healthy and robust at the age of sixty-two. Furthermore, this slowing down and being more in public with others enhances my experience of the Divine, without such experience I don't think that any of us can reach our full potential as humans. I don't have expensive toys or gadgets. I don't need them. I have a laptop computer that still works, a landline phone and at least five hundred books in my home library, half of which are in Spanish. I have my art and writing projects, which sometimes can also be profitable. I also have the good fortune of affordable housing, rare in Vancouver, and it was actually my life experience of indigence that helped open the way to this blessing. But all said, yes, it is very possible to pare down, scale down and live in away that doesn't pollute, that provides opportunities to connect better with humanity and to grow as a human being. This isn't to say that cars are never helpful or necessary. Of course they are. But if people who drive them would simply realize how they are still thinking like spoiled rich kids, and would only use their vehicles as needed, then I think we would all be a bit further ahead. My guess is that most of you who drive, only really need your precious set of wheels and mechanical independence perhaps at most, ten percent of the time that you use them. Laziness and satisfying the demands of your swollen little egos, methinks?