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Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business and to work with your hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody.
1 Thessalonians 4:11-12
According to my handy-dandy study Bible the apostle Paul wrote this sentiment in his letter to the people of Thessalonica in 51 A.D. – clearly, the notion of living simplistically is not a new one. Paul is considered by many to be the father of modern Christianity (aside from God and Jesus, just for clarification…) and a theme of living in a simplistic manner to please God can be found throughout the 13 epistles credited to him in the Bible. In Catholicism, avarice, envy, gluttony, and pride comprise the bulk of the seven deadliest sins of all, yet those are the principles upon which our culture and economy in the U.S. are founded. If Christianity and Catholicism, the most prominent and influential faiths in the U.S. and most other Western “civilizations”, advocate a life lived simply, why didn’t this become our standard of living? When did so many people agree that the pursuit and accumulation of STUFF, a stuff whose supply is limited and finite and whose production indelibly oppresses a silent majority for the comfort and benefit of the powerful minority, was the ultimate in human accomplishment and the answer to achieving satisfaction?
I bring this up because I have spent a lot of time exploring my faith this semester. This class has been extremely challenging to me on a personal level because it has caused me to turn a critical lens on myself and my egregious over-consumption and wastefulness. Through this project of imagining how my life would have to adjust should Manhattan be affected by peak oil and global climate crisis I have discovered that I am capable of learning the necessary skills to lead a more simplistic existence. However, while a peak-oil crisis scenario is looming and may very well become a reality someday soon, right now my reality is that continuing a pattern of lazy over-consumption and wastefulness is the most convenient option, and despite all that I’ve learned, convenience is still too powerful a temptation for me to resist. I found that I needed another motivator, something to make simplistic living seem worth the trouble. I know that sounds terrible- the fact that I’m helping the environment and ceasing my participation in a violent and oppressive globalized capitalist system should be motivation enough, but it’s not. I have to alter my mindset, stop thinking of transitioning to a life of simplicity in terms of what I would be losing or sacrificing, but in terms of what I’d be gaining. Recently, it hit me. I’d be gaining an opportunity to rely more on my faith for strength and comfort.
So, in the last leg of my project, this is what I have been working on. This wasn’t originally part of my plan for my project- working on my spirituality wasn’t on my to-do list at first, at least not for this class, but it ended up becoming a natural and necessary by-product of my explorations. I felt like I needed something to replace the sense of satisfaction I used to get from buying things, from driving for hours wasting gas, and from going out to eat every other night- again something that would make the “sacrifice” worthwhile. I decided to turn to faith, which I am learning leaves me so much more fulfilled than any of this other junk. After a while, my mindset is starting to shift and some of the other benefits of living simplistically are becoming more apparent and appealing:
Health: avoiding restaurants, especially fast-food, and processed foods shipped from who-knows-where will inevitably lead to healthier eating habits. Additionally, reducing my use of my car for transportation means more exercise and a happier, healthier heart.
Community: I have had to rely more on the people around me when I wouldn’t allow Target and Walmart to be the answer to all of my needs, which gave me the opportunity to get to know and find new appreciation for people in my life, like my house mother and cousins who raise goats and the interesting people who come to the Transition Manhattan meetings at UFM. Growing up, I never know my neighbors. You didn’t need each other so you just ignored each other. Looking back, I’m sad about this. Now, I’m so excited about the prospect of being connected to a community!
Time: As has been pointed out in class, living simplistically is actually quite time consuming. However, it gives you a chance to spend your time purposefully so you get more enjoyment and fulfillment from your daily activities and responsibilities. This applies too to the leisure time you are afforded. When I’m consciously working on living simply, reducing my energy usage, my free time activities are much more rewarding than staring blankly at a television screen or scrolling mindlessly through my facebook newsfeed.
Spirituality: As I said, this has been a big one for me. It has offered me a motivation and incentive for working to give up those things that are not only destroying the planet and oppressing millions of people, but also distorting my sense of purpose and self worth. I can re-examine what is truly important in the short time that I’m allotted and I can see how the pursuit of stuff becomes a huge distraction in living how I want to live and being who I want to be.
Here at the end of my project, I’ve learned how to maneuver Manhattan with limited vehicle use, to sew and mend, and to cook from scratch. Now that I have the knowledge and I know I’m capable of learning the skills, now there is a matter of choice. I don’t want to wait until Manhattan HAS to transition to adjust to a crisis- I’m ready to begin transitioning myself, little by little. It’s a scary prospect, but I’ve found the motivation I need to start. I am in a place where I truly believe I could be happier living simply than continuing on the wasteful pursuit of stuff, and I’m excited about that.
For GREAT information on transition initiatives, visit http://www.transitionus.org
Alright folks, it has been quite a while since my last post, but I encountered several unexpected challenges along the way. And I was nervous to cook. Then other times I just straight up got lazy and came up with all kinds of legitimate excuses as to why I couldn’t attempt cooking that particular day. Finally yesterday I sucked it up and did it- turns out my cooking isn’t half bad!
From the beginning of this project I knew that cooking would be my biggest challenge, but also the most important leg of my mission to reskill myself in preparation for the transition into a post-peak oil world. In a post-peak oil Manhattan my entire food culture and lifestyle would be forced to change. As it is right now, my meals are cooked for me 6 days a week and on Saturdays I go out to eat usually for lunch and dinner. This challenged me to consider what I would do if oil and gas prices made that lifestyle financially unfeasible, how would I survive? Well, I’d have to cook, of course! But not in the way that I think of cooking now. I really wanted to push myself to consider how I would have to get a long if life in Manhattan really changed in a major way due to gas prices. How would I have to cook if Dillons and Wal-Mart could no longer ship in food from all over the world, if microwavable TV dinners were a thing of the past, if your staple food sources were whole and fresh ingredients produced and sold locally?
With these questions running through my head, the first hurdle I had to overcome was the question of when I could embark on this culinary adventure. First there was the issue of kitchen access. As I mentioned my meals are prepared for me 6 days a week in Kappa’s industrial-type kitchen, so the only day of the week that the kitchen is available is Saturday, and Saturdays tend to be pretty busy for me. But Easter Sunday there would be no food prepared so the kitchen would be free all day. Perfect.
The next issue was figuring out what to cook. From the beginning I had it in my mind that I wanted to attempt a margherita-style pizza using the pizza dough and mozzarella recipes found in Barbara Kingsolver’s book that we read in class. But then the idea of cheese making began to overwhelm me. I didn’t have a lot of the required equipment, I didn’t know if Kappa’s milk was ultra pasteurized or not, I didn’t know how to go about ordering the cultures you need to produce cheese… (see, I told you I was really good at coming up with justifications NOT to do something when I’m feeling lazy. Believe me, it’s not a trait I particularly love about myself). In time, pizza was starting to sound like a bad idea. Then last Thursday I went to the third Transition Manhattan meeting at UFM and was struck with inspiration thanks to Professor Rhonda Janke, who came and spoke to our class last week. She had made cheese from the milk of her sheep that she brought to share. This reminded me that my cousins, whom I would be visiting Sunday morning for Easter in Wichita, raise goats and often make goat cheese, and goat cheese pizza is frickin’ delicious. The thought of utilizing my cousin’s cheese-making skills to my benefit reminded me- in a post-peak oil Manhattan I probably would not be doing EVERYTHING for myself. One of the main points of transition initiatives is community building and creating resources that can be utilized by the community. At the UFM meetings we talked about what we would like to see in this new Manhattan and some of the things included a local dairy and grain mill- places where I could easily purchase the things I’d need to bake a pizza like flour and mozzarella cheese. With this in mind the pizza plan was back in motion.
So I knew I’d be getting my goat cheese Sunday morning, but Saturday I decided to hunt down the rest of my necessary ingredients- white and wheat flour, mozzarella, tomatoes, mushrooms, garlic and olive oil. Ideally, I would have liked to buy all of these things locally, but farmers’ markets don’t open for a few more weeks, the local grain mill and dairy are still the stuff of Transition Manhattan dreams, and after doing a little bit of research, I’m pretty sure olives don’t grow in Kansas. The compromise I settled on was to buy as many of my ingredients as possible from the Peoples’ Grocer co-op. I had to go online and research what they were all about (have to admit, didn’t know what a co-op was), but they are committed to selling local, organic, and environmentally sustainable goods so I figured they were my best bet. Turns out, unfortunately, the price of sustainability is HIGH. I shouldn’t have been surprised by this, but I was a little taken aback by how much more expensive everything was at Peoples’ and they didn’t even have the produce I was after (probably because it’s not yet in season). I started feeling panicky at the thought of spending so much money for one little pizza, so I ashamedly left the store empty handed, and with head hanging in shame and defeat, instead ventured on to Dillons with only the promise of plus card savings to console me.
Finally Sunday evening came and it was time to cook. I made the crust following the recipe in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle provided by Camille Kingsolver (page 146), minced the garlic by hand and used that and olive oil instead of pizza sauce, topped it with mozzarella, tomato slices, mushrooms and goat cheese. The garlic was more difficult than I expected. I think I thought that it would chop like an onion, but it’s not like an onion at all- it comes in these funny little pods. You probably all knew that, but what can I say, this is all new to me. I nervously placed the pizza in the oven and waited. While I was cleaning up my mess an incredible aroma began to fill the kitchen- if this pizza tasted only half as good as it smelled, I was pretty sure that Food Network should give me my own show right then and there. A few minutes later the pizza was finished and beautiful and absolutely delicious. All in all, despite a few road bumps, the cooking adventure was a great success and I feel confident that I will not in fact starve to death in a post-peak oil world. Here are some photos of my sweet cooking skills:
Garlic pods
The dough
Before baking
After baking (delicious!)
So proud
Story time:
Back in November I got in a fight with a wall. Seriously, I was totally minding my own business then out of nowhere it just attacked me and my favorite pair of jeans. I know, how rude. The battle was epic, but eventually I emerged victorious, though the conflict was not without casualty. My poor jeans, the only jeans that on the first try were not too tight on my thighs but too loose on my hips, my most slimming pair of jeans, my FAVORITE pair of jeans, fell victim to the wall. It was truly tragic.
Ok, so I have a flair for the dramatic. In reality I was walking home from a party and to save time I cut through some backyards that were separated by about a three and a half foot cement retaining wall. I tried to be really skillful and just step up with my left leg rather than be lame and clumsy and climb up on my hands and knees. Unfortunately clumbsiness is totally my default state of being, so the right thigh of my jeans got caught on the wall as I tried to stand up, ripping my jeans and leaving a two inch tear in the fabric.
Normally I would have just thrown the jeans away, gone to American Eagle the next day and thrown away $45 on an identical replacement pair, then spent the rest of the week kicking myself for spending so much money because really, I don’t have that kind of cash to just throw around. Irresponsible, that’s what that would have been. And wasteful. But anyways, this was in November, before the beginning of this class and before this project, but I couldn’t bear to throw these jeans away. Not because I was concerned about the wastefulness at the time (sorry), but because they were my favorite pair- they really were great jeans. So for months I’ve just had these ripped jeans lying around for no good reason. Then I took this class and developed this project and week number two of my reskilling adventure was sewing and mending: light bulb! Why should I throw away a perfectly good pair of jeans just because they have a teeny tiny little rip in them? Because I didn’t know how to mend them and I didn’t want to take the time to learn and in our society this generation would rather throw away insane amounts taken-for-granted cash than walk around in hand-mended clothing (how embarrassing, right?). Sewing and mending, I feel, is quickly becoming a lost art form. My mother sewed her own prom dress as a teenager, not to mention all of my childhood Halloween costumes and countless adorable one-of-a-kind outfits. Unless I start learning to sew now, my hypothetical future children will never own any clothing that are not store bought, generic, and energy consuming. And they will always have to throw away every pair of ripped jeans, and Lord knows childhood sees its fair share of ripped clothing. Time to stop the wasteful madness! Time to learn some skillzzz. Word.
My mom lives 12 hours away in Cincinnati so learning to sew from her for this project would have been totally impractical, but part of the reskilling, transition community philosophy is to take advantage of the often hidden local resources that already exist at our finger tips, we just don’t utilize them because Walmart is more convenient. So, turns out my Kappa housemother is a sewing wiz, the kind of person who quilts and enters sewing projects into art shows- who knew. She’s an incredibly busy woman but she generously donated her time to teach me how to mend my jeans and sew a pillow. Sewing is surprisingly simple! I mean, a pillow is nothing more than a rectangle, so I’m sure it gets much more complicated when making clothing, but sewing is really one of those skills where a basic foundation of knowledge can really get you far. When I figure out how to upload pictures onto a post, I’ll show off my beautiful work, get excited. I really hope that this skill will help to reduce my consumption by allowing me to hold on to clothes longer, even when they get a little beaten up. And I get to wear my favorite jeans again!
Next week’s reskilling mission: COOKING from whole ingredients (cue ominous music: DUN DUN DUN!!! I’ll keep the Manhattan fire department on standby.
I love driving. I love that I go to school out of state because it means that roughly 8 times a year I get to drive for 12 hours with nothing but my iPod and my thoughts to keep my company. I love that my steering wheel doesn’t care that I’m a horrible singer, and I’ll never again see the random drivers on I-70 in Illinois who give me funny looks when they happen to catch me rocking out by myself, so I love that I have no need to feel self conscious. I love that my car offers me quiet and solitude and a refuge from the house that I share with 75 women where privacy is a rare and treasured luxury. Because of this, over the past three years I’ve developed a horrible habit of taking long, unnecessary joy rides. If I’m stressed or confused or bored or even happy, my go-to activity is soaking in the beautiful Kansas flint hills from the highway (Kansas landscape gets a bad rap, by the way. I think it’s gorgeous. If you’ve lived in Kansas your whole life and you can’t appreciate its beauty I highly recommend leaving the state for long enough for you to miss it. When you come back I promise the view will be AMAZING). I consciously choose to ignore the fact that my driving and senseless waste of gasoline is damaging the very earth I so lovingly admire on these excursions.
For this project I had to face the fact that in a post peak oil world my wasteful driving adventures would not be possible. In fact, gasoline would be so expensive that driving probably would not be a practical or feasible option for even the small daily errands where the ease of transportation is taken for granted. In a post peak oil Manhattan, I would have to find alternative means of transportation, which is exactly what I tried to do for the last week. Unfortunately, public transportation in our city is pretty much non-existent, but that would probably be pretty scarce post-peak oil as well, so that was ruled out as an option. There was bike riding, but I don’t own a bike, and while I’m sure I could’ve borrowed one from one of the women I live with, the cold winter air told me bicycles were a bad idea. So, I spent a week letting my feet get real friendly with the sidewalks of Manhattan.
When you’re lazy like me and hop in your car for even the shortest of errands, you really don’t notice how small Manhattan is. Honestly, pretty much everywhere in town is a walkable distance. The only place that I wanted to go that I really felt too uncomfortable to walk to was Target- it would have meant walking down Highway 18, then walking down the ramp with traffic on to Seth Childs Rd., then attempting to cross Seth Childs. There were other routes that could have been taken, but in the end I would have to have crossed Seth Childs and I couldn’t think of a safe location to do that, and my jaywalking skills are a little rusty. So I caved and drove my car. I was only going for toiletries, so I could have gone to Dillons which, I learned from having to get a prescription filled, is only a 15-20 minute walk. When traffic is taken into account, it didn’t take much longer than driving. But I had a gift certificate to Target from my birthday and, let’s face it, I’m a poor college student so I was going to go to Target, damn it! But here is what I figured- in we discuss a post-peak oil scenario, oil hasn’t run out, it’s just reached its plateau of production so gas would still be available, just super ridiculously expensive. So, were this really the case, it may be feasible that I’d use the car every now and then when extenuating circumstances called for it. I decided though that I would want to make the most of my expensive gasoline usage since my car trips would be few and far between. I went around my house asking my friends if anyone needed anything from Target. I found four girls willing to come with me who would have gone later that day anyway, and most likely all in separate cars. Carpooling and reducing at least a little gasoline use on the parts of my sorority sisters made me feel a little less guilty about the car ride.
The biggest challenge I faced when not driving everywhere I needed to be was getting to places on time. Even with a car at my disposal, punctuality has never been my strong suit. When I had to walk everywhere, punctuality just completely went out the window. Fortunately I didn’t have many pressing matters this past week where tardiness really would have bode poorly for me, and I did break down and drive to the Triota induction Friday night even though Dr. Hubler’s house is literally three blocks from mine because I was running late and I was wearing heels. Fail. With the grueling pace at which the world runs today, it was truly difficult to fit in so much extra time for travel to get in all of the things that I needed to do. However, reading the blog posts of my fellow classmate who is authoring the Tech Blackout project, I realized that I probably have more free time to fit in eco-friendly transportation than I think I do, I just waste all of my free time with mind-numbing, energy-sucking technological distractions. Like TV. And TV online. And stalking random classmates from elementary school via facebook while watching TV online. This really got me thinking- in post-peak oil Manhattan domestic energy costs will inflate hugely, so I probably wouldn’t be using all of my techno gadgets as much anymore either, making more time for walking. I can’t adopt complete periods of energy blackout in my living situation (I can’t go in a room here without someone watching TV), but I can limit my computer time, which is a HUGE consumer of my free time. Starting this week (repair and mending week), I will limit my non-school work related computer usage to one hour a day to both conserve energy and free up my free time.
This week made me realize how important convenient transportation is to me. My great grandmother passed away so I had to go to Wichita on Saturday for the funeral. Obviously, I put the experiment on hold and drove the 2.5 hours to be there for my mom and family. But it made me think, what if it really wasn’t as easy as just jumping in the car and going? What will happen when gas is flat out too expensive for me to do that? I live hours from all of my family, both immediate and extended- limiting my access to transportation would mean separating me from the people I love, from my main support system. It makes me realize how important it is that we develop alternative energy sources, because access to transportation to see my family is not something that I want to have to sacrifice in the future.
The wonderful environmentally-conscious individuals in the Women’s Studies department have finally broken me down to accept and confront a fact that I, along with most Americans, have been in denial about for far too long: oil, the main energy resource we depend on for not only our way of life, but largely for our survival, is non-renewable. Its supply is finite, and it’s quickly running out. But before we drain the earth completely of her black gold, or Texas tea, or whatever Beverly Hillbillies colloquialism you prefer, oil production will reach plateau and then begin to decrease, causing oil prices to skyrocket. Environmentalists and alternative energy advocates have been tirelessly working to warn the world that our dependence on oil has left us vulnerable to catastrophe in this post-peak oil scenario when oil becomes too expensive for dependent energy use. Energy for the technologies we depend on may not be readily available and the transportation of goods and services that our economy is built on- that people’s lives revolve around- would become impossibly expensive and impractical. We would be forced to rely much more heavily on a locally-centered, much more self-sufficient way of life in this post-peak oil scenario.
I have theory that should this happen in my lifetime (which according to postpeakliving.com experts concur that it will), I’ll be dead within two weeks.
Ok, maybe I’m being a little overdramatic, but seriously, I don’t know how to take care of myself. I know how to drive myself to Target and buy myself stuff. I live in a sorority house where my food- in all of its processed, pre-cooked, and plastic packaged glory- is delivered to my door on a weekly basis from big trucks. I pay a house bill more expensive than my tuition so that someone will come in and cook it for me. When an article of clothing is torn or goes out of style, I get rid of it. Sometimes I bag it up and take it to Goodwill, but I’ll be honest, often it merely ends up in the trash. It never seemed like a big deal because driving to a store and buying a new one of whatever I had disposed of is so easy. When I need to get from one place to another, I hop in my car and often don’t think twice about the cost of gas. Basically, I’ve lived a spoiled, cushy, wasteful life, and in a post-peak oil world, I would be nothing but a pathetic waste of space and would probably die of starvation.
So I’m pretty hard on myself, but other people around the world began having the same fears, but instead of accepting their fates as wastes of space, they’ve come together to create what are being called transition towns- communities committed to sustainable living. Part of the transition is a push for individuals to reskill themselves in areas that used to be common knowledge for people not-too-many generations ago, things like gardening, cooking, sewing, appliance repair, and all is done with an emphasis on community and local living.
For my project I’ll be exploring what my life may be like in a post-peak oil Manhattan. Taking a page from the all too quotable movie Napoleon Dynamite, I need to develop some sweet skills. But not like bow hunting skills or computer hacking skills. I will work on reskilling myself in some areas that I think will be important in order to become self-sufficient in an energy crisis, areas like energy efficient transportation, sewing and mending, cooking, and community building. The goal is to prove to myself that the type of lifestyle where Target isn’t the answer to everything is feasible. Perhaps if I adopt a lifestyle that is more self-reliant, reducing my personal dependence on oil for my daily survival, maybe that could be one step further away we could be from reaching a peak oil scenario.
And hopefully I can keep from starving to death in the future. That would be good too.
