Re-examining Freedom
Re-examining Freedom
(Approximately a 4 minute read)
Up until around the time we became parents, Alain and I never questioned our assumptions about freedom.
The story of our time says this is normal:
- to be chained to debt and to schedules,
- to have little or no control over where our food originates,
- to be walled off from nature,
- and to be more connected to each other via screens than in person.
This post describes how we began to question that story, and to re-examine what freedom means to us.
(This is Part 3 in a Series about our family's journey towards real and green.)
Thinking for yourself
Thinking For Yourself
(Approximately a 6 minute read)
Thinking for yourself, to me, means understanding what influences your thoughts, questioning everything, and then making your own informed decisions with consideration for the short AND long-term consequences to yourself and other living beings.
Aside from building more autonomy and self-reliance into your life, this kind of thinking will help dismantle the existing growth-at-all-costs system that relies on consumers who don't think for themselves.
An Illusion of Independence
An Illusion of Independence
(Approximately a 4 minute read)
In the modern world, independent individuals and nuclear families are artificially sustained by a fossil fuel dependent, growth-at-all-costs system that cannot last.
The alternative that most appeals to me is a world in which we live interdependently – in direct relationship with each other and with the web of life that can sustain us indefinitely, so long as we care for it as the extension of ourselves that it really is.
Growing Up – For Adults
Growing Up - For Adults
(Approximately a 6 minute read)
Growing up for adults, if you choose to take it on, is choosing never to stop growing.
It's what you do if you decide that rather than live a life and think thoughts prescribed by the circumstances of your upbringing and by the prevailing cultural norms, you’re going to live a life designed by YOU.
(This post is fine to read on its own. But if you have time for a bit more reading, the post Thinking For Yourself is a good lead in to this one.)
Expanding Awareness
Expanding Awareness
(A 3 to 4 minute read)
"It is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society."
— Jiddu Krishnamurti
The fabric of wholeness that once gave us a sense of purpose and belonging—connecting us into a web of responsibility, relationships and health among family, community and nature—has come undone.
In this post, parenthood prompts me to explore this unraveling, and to begin a search for the solutions to it.