i have my own ideas, here's one!

an old Gadsen flag

I've come to notice some dreadful things about this blog. Principally, my ideas haven't always come through clearly enough, and my sidebar of links was sloppier and less selective/helpful than I'd like. I cleaned that up, and now it's time to tackle my first conundrum.

Sure, I've got opinions and misc. knowledge that I like spouting off because it shows what I've proudly spent my time soaking up. But a lot of what I've put up on Noble Savagery is just somit cool I heard or read someplace else. NO MORE, I SAY!
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So here's what's on my mind. What's the most desirable way to set up or select a community? Let me rephrase that for my ownself. Where can I pursue my burdgeoning 10,000 interests and hobbies, which include: being on knowledgable and pleasant terms with a diversity of other lifeforms; rock climbing; magick; making out; food; ad infinitum. (Dang, I should be at the School for Designing a Society!) To start exploring this question, I'm gonna talk about sustainability, then ramble some, then explain what I mean, and why this should be practised in order for life's continued freedom to pursue happiness. I'll talk vaguely about what sustainability properly applied might look like, and be on guard to stay open minded and realistic and not become my own patented brand of "Social Ecology" or something.

Sustainability is a concept, that, when applied to our actions at all, is often missing a lot that would make it an effective praxis. This should alarm anarchists and everyone who cares about their freedom. Here's why.

If we are to pursue our happiness in freedom, having the resources available that our forebearers did would be optimal- if we don't, the option to continue in more or less the same vein they were is taken away. For instance, how come we don't have a greater diversity of amazing, huge and cool animals to interact with and study that our ancestors 500, 6,893, or us 8 years ago? The portion of the cause that concerns us is, naturally, the part our ancestors and we have played in this regrettable state of affairs. People either did not care about the sentiments of today's humans, or did not accurately predict them, when they exterminated land crocodiles, elephant birds, the Chinese River Dolphin, or the Megalania! (Okay, maybe I can deal with not having to deal with that last motherfucker.) But still. People haven't been thinking of the future's best interest.

The flip side is that people must be allowed to branch off from their folks' route. No liberty involved if they can't. The rigidity of a culture can kill its actors, as was shown when the Vikings starved because they were against eating seafood during a drought. We don't want repeats of that.

Sustainability does not necessarily imply someting like a "Steady State Economy". Who wants all those woosy reformist trappings in their idealism, anyway? What a fly in the ointment, to start off with. To rephrase something I saw in a zine I glanced at today said "It doesn't matter how many people have guns, but how they use them... If they respect an authority while tossing out their current ruler, than the next day their authority will confiscate their weapons." But that's not the only problem with something so rigid. Only the laws of the universe must be obeyed, and only until each one can be gotten around.

To illustrate my thinking around this, we are starting at the beginning: If the Goddess denied creating new shit, than nothing would ever have happened. (Would she even exist? But I don't want to get into big "P" philosophy.) If biological evolution had been blocked from occurring than life could not exist. (The primordial ooze or meteor or whatever started that ball rolling could not have even put protein and protein together to start that self-replicating specialness we call Life, because that would have been something like moving from 0 to 1, and without evolution, this change would have been blocked just like moving from 1 to 2.) It predates the cycles that Deep Ecology holds holy. Sure, a lot of critters have died without replicating. But as my dad says "The creative process proceeds with great waste and at great hazard." Keep on truckin', baby.

So here's how the Media lies in all this:

(Scene from medical drama TV show "House" which was on when I started this entry.)

Foreman: "If humans had bothered to once look at his blood, the parasites would have jumped out at them."
Cameron: "Price of the electronic age."

No, no, no. If you can't have your pie and eat it too, than there's no point in having a digestive tract, a pie, or a mind that can comprehend what I just said. So how do you have happiness now, while simultaneously people turn over a new leaf with more technology? And how can self-centered humans who don't give a fuck about anyone but themselves respect each other enough, and the rest of our ecosystems, to get 'er done?

It's not the million dollar question. It has answers. We all have them inside us. Here's one of mine, like I promised.

We learn to see ourselves fully and accurately. Because we are ourselves, we must learn to love ourselves or we'll be unhappy. As we progress in self-knowledge, when we use our senses we inevitably see how similar we are to other humans, other life forms, and really, to everything else- rocks, empty space, an algorithims included. And we respect them, in solidarity. And then we come together in more convivial communities, which use only frequently renewed resources to prevent unpleasant shortages for what we depend on. I'll be able to explore my subconscious, and my friend can run a chinchilla farm, and not fuck up nature or squander the resources that people pushing the technology envelope need to do so. To be continued.