So sometimes, when I'm feeling down about all the destruction each person is responsible for (you know, using approximately 25 or more acres per person here in the US to support our addition to things, nonseasonal foods and so forth,) I go downtown and look for people who seem inspiring; street musicians, people flying creative cardboard signs, mommas carrying babies in slings, breastfeeding on the street, people singing on the MAX, things like that. Here in Portland, I am rarely disappointed. Today I was feeling sorta low, and then I saw a collection of "crusty punks" hanging out in Pioneer Square. And you wanna know what? One of the guys was wearing a real raccoon tail attached to the seat of his pants! Somehow, this made my day! Some folks would feel disgusted or even disturbed by the sight, but something in my heart sang. I thought to myself "another rewilder! Someone so fed up with the culture that he's given it all up, maybe he hunted and killed that coon himself!" More likely, he found a dead coon on the side of the road and cut it's tail off, maybe he ate it? I don't know, but that somehow seemed inspiring. At the same time, I always find the PETA protests that happen in town to be inspiring as well; people that committed to ending factory farms and puppy mills should be commended! So maybe that seems like a contradiction, but I really don't think so. Eating a dead raccoon (or even killing one,) seems ethical compared with eating meat from a factory farm...and if this guy did eat a road killed coon, well even better! When our destructive car-culture kills a furry neighbor, he or she shouldn't go to waste...I'm thinking more and more about picking up the next road kill I see and eating it.
Equally inspiring is the traveling girl with the fire-orange dreds playing classical violin with her dog tangling his leash around her legs as she plays...and the hippy kids with the cardboard sign that reads "Everyone needs a little help sometimes..." I almost gave them some money, just because...
So anyway, I guess what I'm trying to say is that people make me feel so much better, even while I know that even that "crusty punk" probably uses more then his "share" of Earthly resources, if he drinks even a few beers and has a hamburger or two, and uses a flush toilet at the library a few times a day, and maybe uses library e-mail or borrows someone's cell phone to stay in touch with friends; make plans or whatever, even then he isn't living "sustainably," however, he inspires me. I see how I am still being ultra-wasteful comparatively and he reminds me that we all; all of us, the whole human family, have huge changes to make.
Love to all,
Carrot
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Portland sounds like Asheville, NC. Have you ever been there?
www.progressiveu.org/blog/americangirlinchina
I just passed through once, but what a beautiful part of the country! One of my best friends from high school used to live in the area, I always enjoy visiting her down there!
Love ya,
Carrot
Sounds like you're caught in a coon's catch22... dig PETA & dig the sustainability & dig raccoon tails. I'm coming to many of the same realizations. We all try and get by and be entertained by our consumptive lifestyles, but you're right, changes need makin'. I keep asking the question, 'how much less groovy could a more sustainable world be?'
Every organism's heartbeat holds a universe of beauty at http://www.progressiveu.org/blog/green-underbelly
that my love of PETA and sustainability and eating meat can actually all come together...that killing and eating an animal doesn't have to be mean or disrespectful, that in fact, animals will sometimes go to the slaughter willingly (or so says Derrick Jensen, my new favorite author.) You should read "A Language Older Then Words" by Derrick, he is an amazing writer...or better yet, start by reading "Ishmael" by Daniel Quinn.
I believe there are respectful and sustainable ways to eat animals and wear animals; but we need to view them as neighbors while eating them; this requires a whole paradigm shift, a whole new world view. This means that while I believe factory farms and vivisection to be evil and disgusting; eating hunted meat is not, in my book, wrong.
Check out www.urbanscout.org and look up a video on the "Secret of Sustainability" and you'll see what I'm saying...
Love ya,
Carrot