I Want To Ride My Bicycle

"I wouldn't call myself a proponent of [internal combustion engines], I just believe that if something works (cost effectively), keep doing it. I'm all for alternative fuels and sources of energy/power it's just that none that I've dealt with or read about are cost effective. I hope this changes someday, but for now fossil fuels are what makes the world go around as they say."

" You do have a valid point-- I would be the first to break the exhaust line in the vehicle if it pointed inside ...I truly believe that our need for something better ,faster and fancier has lead us to the point that the environment has been critically damaged and we have caused ourselves illness because of it."

"Another idea: Instead of moving forward, you can move backward. There are many answers around us, or things from our past, that still have great value today. We don't have to innovate new things. Think of the bicycle, for example. When we say we need to innovate, we are really saying "we need our scientists to create solutions," which makes us helpless. If we say instead, "what has already proven to work and how can I use that?", we allow ourselves to find our own solutions. It's empowering!"
 

"How many could really go back to old world ways of life? Would you give up all modern technology?  I personally could live in the country near woods and water ...ride horses down the road... but that is not the world we live in...we live in the days [where having] something more than your neighbor makes you better...who is to say a new technology in the auto/transportation industry would not add yet another chemical that could cause cancer?  [I'm] just a simple girl that would love to go back to basics and stop thinking about competing in this modern world of new and more is better."

Man, good discussion, folks.  Yes, bikes are a good alternative, but their application is limited mostly to individual use.  That is to say, not many trucking companies are gonna be breaking out the bikes to get their work done.  I doubt FedEx has a bike fleet.  Should they?  Maybe, but it wouldn't solve our energy problems.  We need more innovation because there are better answers out there.  The fact that we are discussing this acknowledges that there is an issue.  We need to innovate our thinking.  And that's not to say that we need to create something new with new chemicals and further manufacturing that degrades the environment even further.  We can work along with nature.  Nature has been doing things in ways that are sustainable, waste-free, and beneficial to all life for billions of years (depending on your beliefs about it...) Mimicking what nature already does successfully is the objective of the work of people like Janine Benyus.  By observing what nature does to survive, cooperate with other species, and democratically exist in a competitive environment, we can find the models and the practical applications to bring forth and apply to our reality.  We can teach ourselves to live in ways that are truly in balance with our environment.  And right now, our culture is one that is out of balance and in danger of destroying itself.


So in a sense, I'm saying yes to looking backward-- but farther back than the bicycle.  Let's go back to finding our priorities.  To making the conditions conducive to life.  To growing our own food instead of having it trucked or flown in from all elsewheres of the world.  We need to localize our food production, get to know our local farmers.  But now I'm getting out there on another tangent.  Forgive me that.  I speak what comes to mind.  But living with organic foods grown within walking distance from your home would do a lot to combat some of these issues of environment that we're talking about.  


The issue is much more complicated than I've been able to outline here, but I'm trying.  And that is more than we are wont to do these days, as we discuss certain subjects with only the choir, if you know what I mean.  I would love for this to grow into something greater than I have even imagined yet.  But that is up to you, dear reader.  We've got work to do, for sure.  What say we Keep On Truckin'?

Innovating One's Way Out

We need innovation.  In how we do things, how we talk to each other.  How we deal with our problems.

It's a matter of thinking the unthinkable and making it alright.  Not finding fault.  Not assuming you know what somebody's argument is before they make it, or making it for them.  There's need for more compassion.  To be less quick to judge.  To hear people when they talk, and empathize with them.

I'm inspired to write by an exchange of events that occurred on Facebook.  I shared something that I thought was an interesting parable, and what I received was some judgements from the "other side," that automatic dichotomy that pervades our cultural conversation these days. 

I was inspired to paraphrase something that I heard Amory Lovins say, characterizing the struggle to afford new technologies and innovative ways of dealing with our problems of today.  He asked how clean a car you would buy if the exhaust was plumbed into the cab of the car instead of pointed out at pedestrians.  You'd probably want a clean green machine-- one even cleaner than the hybrids of today.  I felt that the question made you think of the situation differently-- to see the danger in the exhaust as a problem that isn't solved by plumbing it to the outside of the vehicle.  That only defers the problem.

But the responses that I received were from the perspective of a proponent of combustion engines.  While I don't disagree with most of what they said-- that if you take care of your vehicle, it can have low emissions and be better than a gross-offender, and that the trucks of today are powerful and do a lot of work that needs to be done to keep our current economy flowing nicely, among other things-- their comments were turning away from the issue that I felt the question was raising.  It is good to take care of your vehicle and slow the emissions of green house gases if you can, but that is not solving the problem.  Our decision to burn fossil fuels and create these byproducts doesn't happen in a vacuum.  We need innovation to find even better ways to deal with these problems that our current ways of living have created.  To look at the situation and say that what we have is good enough is to settle for our very destruction.  We are all connected, and our actions bring forth circumstances that we all have to deal with. 

I don't dismiss what the individuals had to say, I just think it was directed at an argument that I didn't make.  So what can we do?  Well, I say we need to keep trying to make things better.  Innovate.  Move forward.  Do what we have to do, but don't settle for what is now.  There is more to learn, more to be taught to us by the forces of nature, the great innovators.  That's why I like the work of the Bioneers so much.  They're finding the answers to problems of the day by looking at how nature innovates.  And then trying to copy or mimic nature.  The work of Janine Benyus is exciting and blows my mind.  And the applications are astounding.

I'm gonna try and catch the Bioneers conference one of these days.  Next one is coming up is this October.  We'll see.

The War That Drove Me Crazy

For my fourth blog entry, I got political.  At least, I attempted to.  I took the urging of the Obama campaign at the time and wrote a letter to the editor.  I wasn't published (what else is new) and I didn't garner many responses even from my family and friends.  But I think it was an interesting (if a bit too ambitious) foray into the politics of the War on Terror.  The very war that would help to drive me crazy.  Crazy enough to be hospitalized (again).

Those were tough times.  But then, times are tough.  All over.  Jobs still hard to find, economy trudging along, mired in mud, as is politics.  I still have hope for Obama, although I'm wondering why more and more.  I think Lewis Black has it right: that neither of the two main parties are the answer, be it the Republicans or the Democrats.  They're both too tied up in corporate money to be able to answer to the needs of the American people.  There is great change needed, on that most people agree.  But we're too scared to change it all in a grand sweep, without engaging in the whole electoral campaign extravaganza that itself wastes a ton of resources and limits our options to choosing between two evils.  God forbid we try and establish a 3rd party.

But anyway.  Why listen to me-- I'm nuts.

But then, aren't we all just a little bit crazy? 

I think there's more crazy out there than we tend to admit.  We joke about it, but deep down, we know it's true.  We're all bat-f-ing crazy.  And there ain't no normal.  Normal is just an illusion.  Much like reality.

Now I sound crazy.  Another day, another straitjacket.