Radicals Attract Radicals

From mid-January, I volunteered two weeks at a vegan homestead just across the Spanish border in Mediterranean France. Considering the ways most livestock are caged, and exploited, I admire the vegan cause to avoid animal products. However, after time with my host, I don’t feel so strongly about the vegan movement. Amongst three hard-core vegans, I couldn’t get answers to questions like ‘how small an organism does it have to be before it’s vegan, can I eat bacteria, ants, or the snails I find in my garden?’ Instead of getting answers, I got told I was aggressive. I saw how hard it was to debate with certain radicalized people who don’t know how to answer hard questions.

The main thing I took away is how radicalized people cluster around other like-minded radicals. I’m just as radical as she is, in my own ways, and if I found people who were similarly bat-shit crazy like me, I’d cluster around them too. Every night at dinner our host would go on a tirade against the whole world that wasn’t doing their part. Because everyone else who volunteered was vegan, no one else spoke out, and I found it ironic to hear my host complain about people like Happy…

She kept a wild boar as a pet. There I also learned: don’t keep any valuables within reach of wild boars, they will tear it apart. RIP rain jacket…

Sustainability — A Hobby For The Rich

In February, I helped a family build their eco-guesthouse for two weeks in Ardeche, France. France is so expensive, I could only stay there as a volunteer. Even non-organic food is so expensive that I’m convinced it’s why the French are skinny. At this family, everything we ate was organic, the house produced more than all its energy needs, enough to charge their electric car, and the husband doesn’t fly because of carbon emissions. I found it ironic how to eat organically, and live sustainably, you have to have a fortune. For that, you have to be a richer nation and/or work many years of your life in some high-level job, or be in debt. Furthermore, you have to be educated enough about the current standing of the world to comprehend that we’re heading towards a state of emergency. Ironically, most of the building materials and all solar and lithium battery equipment pollute the environment where they’re manufactured. Richer countries can afford to import products without filthy consequences. How fortunate…

Eco B&B construction

Money Helps People Close Themselves Off

As a hitchhiker, you learn that the nice cars never stop. Out of hundreds of rides, it’s happened once. Instead, it’s the everyday common folk that stop. The rich, however, can choose how they travel, public or private transportation, and they can choose who they spend their time around. I see this as a form of money helping people alienate themselves from the common folk via subtle means. Consider the people you avoid when you drive your own car versus taking the bus or sitting first-class instead of economy. It’s like they disconnect into their own bubble and float off.

At each place I volunteered at, I caught a glimpse of families living in their bubbles. Each family had enough money to afford their bubble, some were more open to new ideas, others closed. The question is, how can we undo the separation that money drives us towards?

Everything As It Should Be

It wasn’t until the last stretch of my trip, in late February, I had an epiphany while riding a cramped, night-bus through Poland amongst a herd of snoring mammals. My eyes didn’t want to open, yet I couldn’t fall asleep. I tried out every position but damnit, my neck is too long, or I’m too tall. While I sat in my stupor it struck me — ‘Everything is as it should be.’ Raging fires in Australia, great garbage patches forming in our oceans, raving people over a virus that hasn’t come yet. Everything to this shitty last-minute bus ride, where I can’t sleep. Everything that’s happening in our world right now is happening just as it should.

It’s no wonder our world is going to shit, it’s the natural progression of the way we treat it and each other as a by-product, living in our global economy. No amount of hating all the people who are living unconsciously won’t change a damn thing. I wish I were more hopeful for our race, but I don’t believe a global awakening is coming where we’ll rise out of this unscathed. Our global machine is running itself into the ground, but it’s so big and complex that we can only throw money at it and hope it runs clean. It’s not how I wish it were, nonetheless, everything is as it should be.

Despite my pessimistic tone, this lesson can be just as much a reason for hope. If we believe our bad decisions compound the problems elsewhere around the globe until they bubble up, then the opposite is also true. If we do small things, little by little, like helping out someone in need, or picking up a piece of trash, and if we do it over time, these actions will have an effect. It’ll take time, just as it’s taken N-decades to turn our white winters into slush, however, the results of good actions do compound. I believe that if you do that enough times, something good will happen as a result of it. Over time you will perceive a change. Whether it’s what you wanted or not, I hope you find joy understanding that that’s how it should be.