(1)It was all fun. I am sure I had more fun than any other thing I could have done, certainly had way more fun than going to some artificial “vacation paradise”. I got to meet and know the several dozen residents of Dancing Rabbit, Sandhill Farm, Red Earth Farms, and the dozen visitors. I worked in gardens, planted trees, gathered wood, walked to a small town and neighboring farms, sang, danced, played frisbee, showered outdoors, lived in a place without screaming sirens and roaring traffic and fear of crime. Living locally like this is “the way it was” up until the last few decades. It fits with how we're made, and it was deeply satisfying and “fun”.
(2)It's a moral issue. I saw firsthand how people can live decent lives in ways the planet could sustain and maybe even be improved by. These places are an alternative to the frenetic consumption and colossal planetary-scale destruction of our current life plans. Choosing to live this way could make a difference, if only, if only more of us would do it. It was 'fun' seeing that some people are making that choice and prospering personally even while not burning through wads of greenbacks and filling their homes and lives with manufactured junk, and I can only fervently hope more people and even I have the courage to make this choice and do it soon. Maybe you can't understand, just as I can't figure out why anyone would want to spend good time and money going to Vegas or Disneyland. We're on different planets.
(3)It's a survival issue. OK, this part isn't fun, it's even more serious. Population growth continues on an exponential increase, decades after scientists raised dire warnings of what's to come. Now, resource and environment issues are becoming (even for us) no longer theoretical, no longer a 'future' thing. Our gross consumption and destruction must and will end, someday, maybe soon, maybe badly, whether or not we want to face or accept these facts. As for resources, we're on the cusp of depletion of cheap plentiful oil, and this will be very painful for America, for you and I personally and all our friends, family, and neighbors. Three-dollar gas is hardly even the warmup. There are no magic solutions. It may be hard, even impossible, just to hold on to life and limb. Read “Powerdown” by Richard Heinberg, or “The Long Emergency” by James Howard Kunstler, or see the movie “The End of Suburbia, ” among other sources. And oil is just one resource that we'll 'run out' of. We're using up & running out of topsoil, of water, of copper, of many vital things. Google “peak oil”, “overshoot,” among other terms. Even if we manage to prevail over resource depletion (and we are blithely ignoring and underestimating the challenge and difficulty of this), there's the environment. Climate change very possibly could all but wipe humanity out within a century. (Google “tipping point”+”warming.”) Choosing to live like this is a sane and admirable, and even 'fun', way of facing these issues.
So there ya go. That's my three cents.
bob
14-May-2006 02:29
this is all fine and dandy but what do you do for "fun"?
