Reflection from the city : 13 Dec 2019
by boodaville
I’m sitting in the park crying.
Every day I think about what I can do to make the world better, every lesson I teach, every article I read and share, the path for Boodaville. The world is facing insurmountable problems.
Is it now ok to lie, ok to be racist, ok to be sexist?Arrogance and buffonary are what people want in a leader as the living systems all life relies on are destroyed, rates of deforestation are not slowing, carbon emissions are not being cut fast enough. For every article you share with examples of moving in the right direction I can find several going the opposite way, whale hunting, increased use of plastic, environmental activists being harassed and attacked. Even with the good news articles about tree planting I am concerned that it is not being done “well” (planting monocultre trees is not the same as planting a forest) Right now if we are going to implement solutions can we at least do them properly? it’s an important moment.
George Monbiots book Rewilding is one of the most inspiring books I’ve read recently. and I share here two examples of wonderfulness. But we can see from the rise of authoritarianism that this is not a time to sit and think “oh good” someone shared an article that makes me feel better. This is not to be ignored. Act. Even if it IS just riding your bike, planting some seeds, or just go and sit in a forest for hours and watch and feel what is going on. Take some time out to enjoy the real world, give up on Facebook and the BBC. Watch the Great Hack, let Deep Adaptation help you.
I feel terrible that Kira is going to witness and be affected by great human suffering and a less alive world, and almost certainly conflict and societal breakdown. We want to travel the world in 2023 but I honestly don’t know if the journey will be possible. Living in a world where people increasingly either accept the extinction of our species, or present solutions based on unethical solutions such as letting poor people suffer and die (The tories are already good at that with 1 in 3 children in the uk in poverty) is not healthy. I hope you don’t miss the NHS too much.
Nature is amazing. Permaculture is amazing. Love more, fear less. Hold your own.
I want to do more, I think it might be time to stop teaching posh kids. Not because of the kids, which I think are a target group for changing attitudes of the rich, but because the institution doesn’t as a whole promote ethics or eco values, and everyone is too busy with “bullshit job” style tasks to bring global issues/empathy into the classroom, either that or they don’t know/understand/care enough to do it. I haven’t got the capacity to educate on how the world is any more because resources and time are sucked away from me towards exam grades.
So anyway, if there’s anything else I could do that would be effective, it might be time. It might be way past time actually. What shall we do?
Can Permaculture Reverse Climate Chaos?
The story of a recoverable Earth
Quit my job