We all start from different places, hopefully to end up somewhere together

It's been about a year and a half since this project commenced - my choices have become subconscious now, and I no longer have to think about "trash-free"ness or things of that sort. I think that if you are committed to something, if you are committed to personal change, you move from one state of subconscious to another state. It is difficult to say when that transition happens - it is a sort of gray state of mind - but the changes are real, they are hopefully permanent, and they hopefully serve as a foundation to the continual journey that each one of us needs to embark on to achieve a lasting harmony with people and place.

Everyone talks about sustainability vaguely, many times using lofty rhetoric or abstract words. But what does sustainability mean in our daily lives? What does dealing with climate change really look like? The best view you will get will be from your own experiences, given that change is something you are willing to accept. Indeed, talk dealing about sustainability and climate change without fundamental changes in our worldview and our daily behaviour is impossible; anyone telling you otherwise is either lying or not acting in good faith.

What we do know is that this culture, the burdens it puts upon us, our choices, and their subsequent reinforcements to culture are all unsustainable. They are unsustainable in different ways, depending on where you live, where you grew up, and what your current subconscious dictates you do. I grew up in India, and it didn't seem "natural" for me to able to buy something as readily as you may here in the US. At the same time, for people that grew up in the US, not using toilet paper doesn't seem like the accepted, the culturally defined way to be. Of course, in the end, this is a very unimportant example compared to something like the accessibility to personal transportation and so on. But it serves as an example, a tangible example of the spectrum of detail that we must address, of the spectrum of choices that different people in different places will have to make. In the end, the places we must adapt to are the places we live in. Each place is unique, and each place has its own pressures. Sustainability here doesn't look like sustainability there.

But we must recognise, admit, and fully accept that we have a problem. It is only then that we will be willing to do something about it.

The path from here to there

I question myself at times. Am I doing enough to combat the problems I see in the world? I know I am not, because if I were, I would hope to see much less strife around me. And thinking that I am doing enough can lead to a moral stagnancy and a privileged complacency. Such thoughts are rife with entitlement. Of course there is a sense of satisfaction in small steps. But where we need to be isn't a quantum step from here, but rather a paradigm shift from here. Where "there" is is unclear, particularly because while I can envision a small farm being self-sufficient, the scale of the problems cannot be solved by envisioning a small farm somewhere. We need small farms, of course, but we also need massive structural changes around the world. How can this happen? What is the path from here to there? There are likely an infinite number of paths from here to there, but they all fundamentally need to be founded on a new ethic of our place in the world, the articulation of which is this blog's primary goal.

The journey that I believe we must all be involved in is one of observing, introspecting, changing the self, and then projecting the self outwards. Let me explain a little bit more. We must first face the world openly, and be open to being affected by it. We cannot disconnect ourselves from what we observe and the emotions it evokes in us. That means being affected by observing a homeless person, and being affected by observing the dumping of chemicals in rivers, and being affected by observing discrimination. Such observation allows us to question underlying assumptions we have about the world, and how we are complicit in those outcomes (homelessness, pollution, discrimination, etc.). In the beginning and in the end, it is us who add or subtract legitimacy to structures that perpetuate these problems. I believe this introspection is absolutely essential. The changes we wish to see in the world can come from nowhere else but from our own lives. We must question our morals and ethics, and put ourselves in other people's shoes, not the shoes of the elite and privileged, but those of the oppressed and disenfranchised. Where we go from this point on is a matter of responsibility. As I said previously, for those of us who have realised and understood the degrading effects of this culture, we cannot let others not know. There must be a projection of ourselves outwards. Only this will allow change on the scale that is needed, a scale which is larger than ourselves, but guided and influenced by changes in our own lives.

This process mustn't stop, because we mustn't stop observing.

Reflections on the year: The importance of the journey

There has been much to write about for the past two days, and I apologise for not having done so. I am on a small trip to Georgia Tech for a conference, a trip which Paul and I decided to do by car; we decided not to fly.

We arrived in Atlanta last night, after taking a couple of days to do the drive through Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee and the northern part of Georgia. Along the way, we stopped in Dayton and had sandwiches in the Oregon district. We stopped in Lexington and explored the University of Kentucky; the campus was quiet because all of the students were on spring break. But Paul and I decided to throw a Frisbee around and see where the Frisbee took us; it took us to little nooks with wooden benches and daffodils, large expanses of lawns, and a beautiful wide pit in front of the library. As we continued to drive south through Tennessee, we saw weeks of spring progress in minutes and hours right before our eyes.

I feel like Paul and I could have missed all of this very easily had we decided to fly down to Atlanta. Yes, we would have "saved" six hours of travel time each way and we could have "gotten on" with our lives. But it seems nowadays we have become so accustomed to flying over small and vast expanses of the country, rather than exploring it and observing the gradients and differences. The drive gave me a better understanding of the landscapes this country is made of. The journey is as important as the destination.

Oregon District, Dayton, OH

Where will you take us?

University of Kentucky

Spring in KY

Library, University of Kentucky

Beautiful tree

The drive made me think about this past year. We live in a world where many want answers and solutions now, and to do that, we build ever faster computers with greater and greater computing power, we try to maximise the efficiency of everything we do. The challenges that face our world socially and environmentally, however, have no quick fixes. It would be nice if we were to come up with quick and easy ways to empower people everywhere to put all of these problems behind us. We may be able to cope with top-down approaches to solving these problems and understand them. But maybe not. Any durable change that fills our lives cannot come from anywhere else but from within. I feel that if people aren't involved in the journey of struggle and learning, any quick fix will not be a durable one. The journey allows a deeper understanding of the fundamental issues that can be easily overlooked when we look for quick fixes. We shouldn't forget that our quest to make each one of our lives less impactful is a journey. What is more important to realise though is that such a journey doesn't require being an engineer or doctor or social worker. We have all been endowed with all we need - hearts and minds and souls. All we need to be is open to the possibilities that will present themselves along the way.

I can't believe it has been three hundred and fifty-eight days since this my project started; it has been the start of a wonderful journey, a long journey whose conclusion is uncertain (one thousand points to the person who figures out which movie this is from).