We used to fly

Another quick trip over the weekend to check in on these good folks in Colorado - their post-retirement adopted home.

 

I may have read too much apocalyptic literature and watched too many end-of-the-world tv shows and movies, but I couldn't help but look at folks at the airport - coming from all over, heading out to who knows where, many reading magazines and newspapers with cover stories about the financial crash - and hear the voice over: "We used to fly." 

I may also have been influenced by the book I brought along for the trip - Depletion and Abundance: Life on the New Home Front OR One Woman's Solutions to Finding Abundance for Your Family while Coming to Terms with Peak Oil, Climate Change and Hard Times, by Sharon Astyk.  I removed my moratorium on book-buying for this book, and I am so glad I did. Having followed Sharon's blog over the last year or so, I knew it would probably be smart, informative, and practical. I would not have guessed, though, how thoroughly engaging it is. I underlined sentences, then paragraphs, then pages to read to John while we drove. I don't think I've been as excited about a book since first reading Wendell Berry. And I do NOT say that lightly.

The book is about the "coming crisis" and Sharon has proven herself way ahead of the game in predicting a number of things that have already happened, including the spike in world hunger we experienced earlier in the spring, the rise in gas prices, the mortgage crisis, and the stock market crash. She roots out the core causes and enumerates practical things to do to protect ourselves and our families as the crises begin to hit closer and closer to home. This kind of thinking could lean toward the "survivalist" mentality of stocking your bunker and battening the hatches, but Sharon has a deeply moral and ethical point of view rooted in community and relationship - and hope.

Here's an excerpt:

My friend, Pat Meadows, a very smart woman, has a woonderful idea she calls "The Theory of Anyway." She argues that 95 percent of what is needed to resolve the coming crisis is what we should do anyway, and when in doubt about how to change, we should change our lives to reflect what we should be doing "anyway." Living more simply, more frugally, leaving reserves for others, reconnecting with our food and our community - these are things we should be doing because they are the right thing to do on many levels. That they also have the potential to save our lives is merely a side effect ( a big one though).

That is, I think, a deeply powerful way of thinking because it is a deeply moral way of thinking. We like to think of ourselves as moral people, but we tend to think of moral questions as the obvious ones: Should I steal or pay? Should I fight or talk? But the most essential moral questions are the ones we rarely ask of the things we do every day: Should I eat this? Where should I live? What should I wear? How should I keep warm/cool? We think of these questions as foregone conclusions - I should keep warm a particular way because that's the kind of furnace I have, or I should eat this because that's what's in the grocery store. Pat's Theroy of Anyway turns this around and points out that the way we live must pass ethical muster first. We must always ask the question, Is this choice contibuting to the repair of the world or its destruction?

This is one quote out a slew of highlighted, underlined, asterisked, and dog-eared pages of this book so far. I hope you'll read it yourself. And while you do, you could check out Crunchy Chicken's book group for other's thoughts on the book and its ideas. And if you're local, leave a comment here. I'd love to hear your thoughts - especially on how to adapt Sharon's ideas to our particular location.