I tend to prioritize my immediate satiation above higher ideas I sometimes think I believe in. Mostly, I indulge in adrenaline based sports as the highest priority. I justify it as necessary selfishness or something like that. I wonder if all of us on that adventure sports life are in the same bus. It's like such a closed yuppyland. You must be this tall (white/rich) to enter.
"Be a devotee in the church of the consumer,
and you'll forever live in fear
of the capricious god of style."
_Ken Ilgunas
Consumerism and the Way
When I think about how hard we consume I get disgusted. Then I get passive as I forget. I start to disbelieve my own conclusions and think that personal consumption isn’t really the problem so much as industrial waste. Therefore I can thoughtlessly credit card whatever I “need” off the internet. There are other hidden personal associations with how and what we consume though that get lost in the cracks. How you appear in society. How your interactions with other humans flourish. What you make with the world. Your own understanding of self-reliance, and the ability to fix things. The addictions of one-click online shopping. Your own connection to what you own and why. Your connection to who made your stuff.
On Overcommitting
"There is a pervasive form of contemporary violence ... activism and overwork. The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of its innate violence. To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything, is to succumb to violence. Th frenzy of our activism neutralizes our work for peace, It destroys the fruitfulness of our own work because it kills sour inner wisdom which makes work fruitful." _Thomas Merton
"Often times change in our lives doesn't happen all at once. One of the most valuable things that I feel like I can say to someone ... is to take steps. Don't get caught up in doing everything at once. There is this idea in permaculture of transitional ethics. It goes, this is where we are, and this is where we want to be, and there are steps to get here. You can't just jump from point A to point B." _Guisepe (Free Tea Bus)
I live in a van now. I have a lot of thoughts about it. I think I'll save them for another day.
