some thoughts on the folly of self sufficiency

I must confess to being a bit of a tree hugger.

Having said that, I think we do need to rethink our notions of what being green is effectively about. There is huge list of misconceptions that we should rethink, but I'll just focus this blog entry on the one.

My generation grew up with the notion that to be green you had to aspire to become Tom and Barbara Goode, live the Goode Life. According to the popular sitcom of the time, even if you lived in Surbiton you were to give over your garden to vegetables and livestock, opting out of the twentieth century to become entirely self sufficient. A host of similar examples could be quoted to conform to this archetype.

But being green and treading lightly on this world is nothing to do with being self sufficient. In the past, even human gatherer societies depended on links and ties beyond the family group. To be human is to be part of that larger whole that is society.

Thinking about the Swiss, Swissmiss the popular blogiste posted a photo of a Swiss farmers log pile stating how they could not help but be tidy and thorough in everything they did. While a book on the architects Herzog and de Mueron pointed out that although the Swiss aspired to their rustic farmhouses, their society was based on leading financial institutions. There is no contradiction here, you can tread lightly on your land but be entirely of a modern economy.

Whatever we do, in being green we should remain part of this world. Despite their separate notions, the Shakers were renowned in the wider world for the quality of their seeds.

We may not choose to adopt all the norms of society, but we should not disengage, instead we should engage productively with it.

We dream in absolutes, but live in compromise.

We should live like the Swiss and the Shakers, treading lightly upon the world and like gardeners imposing our own green vision upon some land, how it should/could be. But we should also make money and a contribution to the wider world where we can.

It is the outliers who affect where the norm is. Some outliers manage exert a pull over people's perception of what is fashionable/possible/desirable/normal and pull others over in their direction. A neighbour of mine grows vegetables in their front garden, treating it like an intensively farmed allotment. I think that this is tremendous, it brings the reality of food in front of us.