Recent Activity

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  Brief thoughts (slash short rants)

  well i'm glad you decided to pre-birthday!  the question is how do we get everyone to care about global issues, or even start to think that maybe they should

  Posted 27 Apr 08 in Earth Chat

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  Branching out

  (I need to learn not to chave this on chat mode- i did that with my vsm post too, which is why it ended so abruptly)

  So as I was going to say:

  I'm going to get back to those points, but since we had the Frolic today I can't help but have my mind stuck on the raw energy and sense of community I felt while riding my bike around that group of people.  I was free and yet I was a part of something larger, solitary and yet not at all alone.  We were there for different reasons, but the very fact that we were there united us- together we exposed ourselves to judgement, and together we didn't care if we were judged.  When I was with the frolickers I realized that our actions and efforts and thoughts-- the time we take to write and talk to each other-- are not in vain.  And I can only speak on my own feelings here, but I think that that sense of community and solidarity is eaxctly what we need to enact the sort of change which we all know is necessary and at the same time this sense of community is exactly what our society is lacking.

  Taking off our clothes was merely a physical representation of what we were really doing today.  We're not supposed to question the way things are.  We're not supposed to walk around outside in our underwear.  But we did, and not only did we bear our bodies to the world but we also stood together and acknowledged the fact that "the way things are" MUST be questioned.  And if questioning means that we will get staired at and judged or scoffed at and ignored, it doesn't matter.  Because there are some people who will stop in their tracks, tear off their clothing, and join in the march.  But WE have to frolic or those people will never find us.

  Nature does need to be brought into the city and to do this we'll need new ways of thinking, like seen in Tim's algae post.  But every single thing that we do and every word that we write will be meaningless if we don't have that feeling of community, if we can't capture the energy that I know we all felt at that frolic today and feed it so that it endures and grows. I have no idea how we could do this or even if we can, but I do know that it must be done. Somehow we have to do it.

  Posted 03 Apr 08 in Earth Chat

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  VSM

  Just wondering what you guys think of the title "the VSM."  I think it sounds too techincal almost- it's another anacronym to add to a daily growing list.  Even "the voluntary simplicity movement" sounds like something a journalist spat out because it sounds pretty.  Besides, tacking the word "voluntary" in there implies that our lives are somehow constructed in a way that is inherently un-simple-- and there's another problem; i can't say inherently complex because we do live complex lives.  I can even say that people who choose to consume less have more complex, rich lives that people who simply conform to societal norms.

  Posted 24 Mar 08 in Earth Chat