OWS, Personal Responsibility, Civil Liberties, and the Death of Dialogue

Do you think I'm biting off a bit much with this title?

I'm a big fan of OWS.  I haven't done much to support them, except to get off my butt and complain to the White House about the Homeland Security coordinated break up of the encampments.  Most of my friends are theoretically behind them as well, although they will hop on board to complain about them disrupting traffic, antagonizing workers who are part of the 99% and just trying to get to their jobs, or causing tax dollars to be spent on additional overtime.

I am privileged.  I'm a white man, with two college degrees, one of which I didn't have to pay for.  I'm probably in the 5%, at least at the moment.  I also have an underwater mortgage, debt related to the second college degree, and debt related to excessive consumer spending.  I'm committed to paying it all off, and if everything hangs together for a few more years, it looks like I will.

They're doing all right on the politics.  Focus is being brought to bear on the post 9/11 style of policing, the need to do more to remove corporate money from the process of governance, and the fact that our democracy and constitution is severely damaged at this point.

But the part that I've been working on for a few years, and think that Occupy needs to embrace, is to work to starve the problems at their roots.  If you complain about certain corporations, and then still give them your money, you are just complaining.  Consumer culture is the drug that allows the multinationals to run amok. I've been buying high quality new and used clothing, and less cheap stuff.  I've engaged in more cooking from scratch, and less restaurant and convenience foods.  I've started a small garden, I'm canning loss-leader food from the Thanksgiving sales and I've learned how to make sauerkraut. 

Learning and teaching self-reliance needs to be at the core of the movement, as well as building community.  If that is at the core of things, there is a chance to starve some of the worst aspects of our corporate culture, and make a more sustainable planet at the same time.

Putting Food By...

We had a lot of fun on Friday...

Both fuzzyscribble and I had taken Friday off-- we had been working too much lately, and had been tossing around the idea of going out to one of the U-pick farms about an hour outside of Chicago to spend a day in the sunshine, and pick up some produce to enjoy, and possibly can/experiment with.  She had looked through some stuff on the web, and picked one called Susie's Garden Patch, located between Marengo and Belvidere.

Friday came, and we got our usual slow start.  We left sometime around eleven, and had an uneventful drive.  Susie and her husband were pretty low key, chatting with some locals when we got there.  We asked what there was to pick, and were told basically pumpkins.  She said, "There are tomatoes and peppers as well, but that whole section is kind of a mess."  Well, about two hours later, we were ready to pull out with our haul.  We had twenty pounds of tomatoes (basically seconds), twenty five pounds of peppers (mostly hot), our pumpkins (of course), a half dozen winter squashes, and three eggplants.  Our total?  Forty dollars.

We wandered around town some more, picking up some canning supplies, and looking at this and that.  Picked up some roasts to cook for Fuzzy's mom and a couple of friends today.  Decided to leave town the long way and drive around some more.  We stopped at a vegetable stand and picked up some more random produce, and after we left the stand, saw a sign for an orchard close by.  There, we picked twenty pounds of  Johnagold apples, and bought a bushel of Honeycrisp seconds to make applesauce with.  We also bought two quarts of local honey.

Now, I realize that having a car made this possible, but that was over a hundred pounds of produce for right at a hundred bucks.  It's not necessarily more expensive to buy produce and feed yourself, you just need to work at it.  Luckily for me, this kind of work is fun.

So far this weekend, we've canned pickled hot pepper rings, made homemade barbeque sauce, made jalapeno jelly, and chili-tomato jam.  We still have to make a lot of applesauce, and Fuzzy has an apple chutney recipe that she wants to do.  I still have to get some sauerkraut pickling in my pots.  Time to get to work!

Debt Ceiling

An interesting vote in Congress today. The American economy is running up against the limits of growth, as is the rest of the world. Most of the world does not realize this yet, but this vote, and the debate around it, is the beginning of the recognition of the problem.

Well, I wasn't feeling the Emerson Prompts...

So I've decided to use aikiweb.com's Doka of the Day instead.

"To command the forest of enemy blades arrayed before you,
Know that the enemy's spirit/mind is your shield."

                              - Morihei Ueshiba

I figure that I need to meditate more on aikido, as well as practice it more, so this might be a decent spot for some thoughts.  I shall see.  I expect to do some decent exploration on a superficial level, and completely miss the deeper point of the doka.  Between my limited understanding, and what might be lost in translation, the goalposts are set low.

This one seems easy in some senses.  A sword is a sword.  A gun is a gun.  Weapons are inanimate objects, only given a form or purpose by the mind that wields it.  Nearly all aikido practice renounces violence.  In my experience, the greatest benefit of weapons practice is how it magnifies the intention that you bring to the mat.  A shaky focus, an impure strike, poor body mechanics are all magnified by the use of a weapon.

When practicing with a weapon, the one who performs a technique usually needs to create an opening for his opponent to attack.  Without an opening between one of the two partners, the guard is extended, and there is no opportunity for contact.  When the opening exists, and the world begins to move, you react not to the sword, but to the intention behind it, guarding and entering the opening that the attack created.  The truly skilled can continue this dance of connection for a very long time.

Whether in aikido, or in life, you do not react to the blade.  The blade moves as it is intended by your partner.  When they move, when they break the guard, they give you the gift of reading their motives and goals, and create an opening for connection.  With practice and skill, you can engage them in the same way.

Another So-So Prompt

Today's was what would you do with one week to live...

It would be pretty simple-- I would plan a large party, invite all my local friends, have it last until dawn. I would like to spend most of the rest of the week with my family, talking and sharing most everything I could of my life. Finally, to spend the last several hours, day, with my lifemate, and die happily in her arms.

Emerson Writing Challenge

This current reboot was inspired by an Emerson writing challenge that is making the rounds. Of course, I answer one question and become promptly unimpressed by the next two. One involved reframing what you feel your biggest weakness is into a strength, and posting that. That's simple-- I internalize too much, and don't share my fears when they exist. Not very interesting, eh?

The other was where would you like to travel to? More of a writer's block question on LJ, isn't it? It also seems to be an affront to Emerson's philosophy, givn that most of us don't even fully inhabit the places we live. But I look forward to someday visiting Norway and Turkey.

Taking a Challenge -- Day 3

It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude. - Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance

The world is powered by passionate people, powerful ideas, and fearless action. What’s one strong belief you possess that isn’t shared by your closest friends or family? What inspires this belief, and what have you done to actively live it?

I'm extremely worried about peak oil, the end of easy energy, and the failure of our society to plan for the future.  I'm attempting to build personal resilience by relearning old skills, such as making sauerkraut and cooking from basic ingredients instead of depending solely on convenience foods.  In my professional life, I helped plan my company's capital infrastructure plans for the next 10-15 years, including developing an engineering solution which probably made up for my lifetime's carbon emissions.  Otherwise, I'm trying to build community, and help my friends become more personally resilient in the face of a more and more interesting future.