Back to the earth

This rather random picture of a housing development on the outskirts of Cape town illustrates by point about the problem facing humanity, why this is not a solution to our futures. Although I do commend the government of South Africa for trying to deal with the housing shortage in South Africa, there are several troubling aspects about the way we go about providing housing these days. These homes are all tied into the grid of dependency. They are consciously or unconsciously designed to be slaves to a system that can and will at some point fail to provide us with our needs. Water is pumped to these homes. Human waste is washed away. Electricity sent and bought They provide very little warmth during winter which means they must be supplemented by warmth from fossil fuel, they provide very little cooling in summer which means they provide an uncomfortable existence. They don't produce any food. They have destroyed the natural environmental. These homes are all tied into commerce by supplying a mall where things can be bought, whether they can afford it or not. What they don't provide is any freedom, they tie you into that way of life, good or bad the moment you gratefully move into your that new home, you become a slave. This applies not only to the homes of the poor in Cape Town but pretty much every home in the city of every country. The point of my blog from now on will be the attempt to emancipate us from that slavery of dependency. So it has been ages since I last posted something here... but it has been rather uneventful up to now. Stuff have happened of course but nothing I really felt inspired to write about. It has been a rather intellectually lost time for me but I'm back. I got inspired to write again: North Korea wanting to usher in the nuclear winter upon my home in Seoul and upon the rest of the world, global financial crisis persisting and the threat of peak oil hitting us, global water resources depleting, environmental destruction running amok and nuclear disaster in japan. I am human after all, if you prick us do we not bleed? I'm beginning to feel like shouting out: "Hey this is not what I signed up for!". Crisis seems to be looming ahead of us. There is a pronounced mood of doom laden cataclysm in the media, in the fiction we consume and in the reality we witness. But i am not one of those doomsayers who think world destruction is inevitable and there is nothing we can do: that we should all be repenting and praying to skygods for mercy in the heavens. It is evident that the world is in crisis but it can be averted, and it can be averted pretty easily within one generation should we choose this path. Alternatively we could just carry on the way we are, the way we think is the only way forward, the un-cerebral viral oozing forward of our specie into darkness, like Carl Sagan proposed advanced species might suddenly sprout up in the universe and then destroy themselves due to their advanced technology but un-evolved ability to deal with that technology in a sustainable manner. This would though lead us to that point of no return, the point where it is too late to make generational changes to the way humanity functions, where we simply have no other option to wait for our own demise. Either way, humanity as we know it today will be restructured. To what outcome, i'm not sure but i'm sure the outcome of the way I am to propose will afford humanity an existence superior in terms of delivering us our basic needs to the inevitable downturn in civilization we would face if we are to do nothing and continue on the path of the 'way we are'. I apologize for sounding doom laden and negative but i don't think i'm being unreasonable, just pretty realistic. You see, seven billion people have slowly become dependent on government to supply basic needs, food, water, sanitation, electricity, gas. Our houses and lives are build around the presumption that these resources will flow to us without fracture. We assume we will always have food, yet food prices soar in times of crisis. Fresh water is a limited commodity that could become the new gold in the future as it becomes more scarce. Electricity today means coal, burning of fossil fuel, also a limited resource that contributes to global warming or nuclear power, the source of what might still be our demise. Most notable our lifestyle and existence as it is today relies on fossil fuels. It drives out transport means, means of production, food and otherwise, it provides out warmth in the cold. So what happens when these run out. How do we survive. Well I have the proposal based on some pioneers in different fields addressing these problems. This blog will provide me with my own forum to wrap my brain around those ideas and to consider other problems and solutions. My proposal for my own lifestyle is the based on the combination of 3 technologies (as I see them, but they are probably better described as philosophies). First being Earthship biotechture, second Permaculture design and lastly Food Forrest horticultural gardening. From these 3 concept I think everything we need to survive in a sustainable way will flow. None of these require external government. In fact currently external government is one of the largest obstacles to living sustainable. This will have to change if we as specie intend to change. Ill address each concept in separate post and lastly conclude why these combine into the perfect trio of sustainable living. Ill address why I think it is inevitable that humans get back to the earth and re-root themselves in a manner akin to prior the advent of agriculture.