What’s going on in sustainability:

Hopefully many of you will be able to make the Bee Keeping event in Germantown tonight. For more information, please look at the last blog.

As for this blog, I would like to offer something that has been on my mind for some time, and resurfaced last night while brewing beer and eating some food. The topic of conversation stemmed from a film titled, “The Future of Food.” The premise is a bleak assessment of where GMO seed, erosion, and climate change will leave our food security in the near future.

And although the conversation had a somewhat “doomsday” kind of feel to it, there was hope. Not the blind hope that some hold onto, but the cautious hope that the pragmatically optimistic homesteader relies on. As the conversation continued, the idea of the Transitional Town came up. This idea was started in England by University intellectuals and has since spread to over one hundred towns. The idea of a transition town is simple in its essence; basically is it a town where if the oil reserves dried up tomorrow and the electricity shut off, people would still be able to live. This is a difficult pill for the mainstream green minded person to swallow. For in its argument it implies on the base level that buying organic mass produced products and installing LED light bulbs is not  enough, and on the deeper level, there is no “green” solution to alter the way we live. The only solution rests in the realization that we will not be able to sustain this life of convenience and comfort we presently have in America, green or not.

This conversation resonated with me, for as I said, I’ve been thinking about this subject for some time, but not just in food security, although it is a major part. I’m thinking more in terms of how we as a culture are in no way ready to take this change on. And it’s not because we are too fearful or ignorant. I feel that it is because we are not organized. That at the end of the day, many of us still go to the organic supermarket chain with money that we rely on a completely outside source to give us. We have no control over our means of existence.

Some people who read this blog may disagree. They may live on a farm, or make a living through the commerce of something they create. But for many, we enjoy the socially communal life one finds in a city, or in a non-profit work environment. But I don’t feel it will be too far off the mark to charge that these institutions have in many ways failed us. That in many instances the structure of the non-profit is not that much different from the corporate structure, and that cities make us feel even more disconnected.

What made the conversation so beautiful last night was the dreaming that went on. Sure, some ideas seemed unrealistic, others not that interesting. But many were not confined to the way we presently live; a revelation that there are many ways to live. One way I propose is in the power of the cooperative. In past articles I’ve professed the power of the community group or volunteerism. But what the cooperative does is not just help support peoples actions, but to support their lives as a whole. I have existed in the world of the non-profit for some time, and in my experience, it’s current structure is no way to live. It’s almost impossible to thrive when every year the reissuing of grants shuffles people around and you are constantly living in fear of losing your job.

After reflection, this is what I came up for what it means to really live cooperatively. It means going beyond social network sites to find out what’s going on in my neighborhood. It means buying that hand made shirt or locally grown vegetable even if it’s more expensive and less inconvenient to find. It means never confining myself to a lifestyle or economic system that I think is unmovable. If the past year has taught me anything, it’s that any job, any investment, any system can disappear. And hopefully as you keep up with this blog, you will get the ideas of what to put in those missing places.

Sorry for the manifesto like entry, but I felt the need for a starting point for the great changes that are coming to Philadelphia and beyond, changes that have been in the making for years, and that can only continue if we finally accept them. This is what I love about winter. It is a time to lower activity, reflect on your actions, and then come back in the spring with a fresh perspective.

Please stay tuned in to this perspective. Until next week, this is the note from the urban homestead.