Transition Vashon

I first became intrigued with the question of absolute necessities for a happy life when I encountered happy, hospitable people living in dirt floor houses in small villages in Venezuela during my stint in the Peace Corps. These may not have been the people considered to be in dire poverty living on $2 a day; they were probably more in the range of $5 a day. Their lives seemed to be much better than their income would suggest, and I found that their secret was that most of their needs were met without money. They probably didn’t own the land they lived on but nobody was contesting their occupation. They lived in a supportive community. There were some vegetable patches, plenty of chickens about, and other staples like beans and rice were relatively cheap. Often, villages like this adjoining the larger city that I worked in had power as well, but they usually were not official metered customers. I shudder to imagine how somebody climbed a power pole and managed to clamp on to a live power supply line on behalf of the neighborhood. I’m not saying their lives were ideal; there was a lot that they lacked. However, whatever else you might have had to say about these people, you’d have had to admit that they were resourceful.

I’m not proposing that we pirate our utilities, but I do wonder how some of us in the most technologically advanced nation in the world are struggling to survive on incomes that are 300 times higher than those folks in the so called "third world." What is it that drives our cost of living so high, and do we really need all that we pay for to be happy? There was a time in the 1920’s when Henry Ford’s employees were making so much money, they had bought everything they needed and were asking for the only thing they couldn’t buy: their time. Thus began the art of creating needs and wants where none had heretofore existed. It was such a success that we are now working more than ever, are in debt to our ears, and still can’t get all the things we want. Being satisfied with "enough",i.e., giving up buying power for more time, may be your quickest route to real wealth, if you can buck the obstacles our corporate fathers have designed into the system.
 
Technology plays a big part in anteing up our cost of living. It is usually considered to be merely a tool that we use, but it can be said that it shapes us and the world we live in. Between needs and wants, I would like to create a category of "habitual needs." Take increased mobility. We now have a greatly expanded ability to travel long distances and much of that has become needed travel. In saying that we need a car, we are also saying that we need insurance, need to pay for gas and repairs, and need to buy another when the current one ceases to satisfy. All the other technological wonders of our age have their costs of acquisition and maintenance. Do these make us happier? They certainly have their moments, but, with habituation, we mostly notice them when we lose them. Fear of losing them keeps us tied to a job that we may not like.

In our "developed world," a wealthy person is defined by having a lot of money. The obviousness of that statement indicates how completely we have accepted it. It is because practically everything we may need or want has been commoditized. That means we have to present some dollars for most everything we need. But is money itself wealth? Is wealth synonymous with happiness? Our short answer is usually yes and yes, and our problem is that, in our daily struggle, we seldom think much beyond our short answer. Money was originally invented to facilitate the creation and distribution of goods and services to everybody. With capitalism, it became a source of wealth in itself and a restrictor of the flow of goods and services.
 
It seems we can’t just "be" in the world anymore. Stay in any one place too long and you will need to pay somebody; a homeless (that is, a penniless) person is likely to see this much more readily than the rest of us. Perhaps being pushed along continually is the cause for our inability to reflect on our situation.
 
In a way, I am thankful for the climate crisis because, in rising to the challenge, it can bring us together and make us more resourceful. It signifies a natural end point for corporate capitalism and our evolution to local economies that are based on real indices of health and well being, not only for humans but for the whole living matrix of which we are only a small part.
 
Comments?
Terry@vashonloop.com