The Good Life Lab by Wendy Jehanara Tremayne

Author:Wendy Jehanara Tremayne
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Storey Publishing, LLC
Published: 2013-05-05T16:00:00+00:00

Between skill-sharing workshops and meals we discussed the irony of our situation. The digital homesteaders gathered at our home use technology, tools, and equipment to create a lifestyle less entangled with money. . . and yet these things require money to obtain. We share a wish to live sustainably on the earth, and yet the production of the things we use comes at a cost to the environment. Our lifestyles are full of contradictions. The PV solar array that Mikey and I installed generates clean power for our home, but its manufacture left a carbon footprint. We use the clean power it produces to run machines made in factories that help us build out of waste materials. Much of what we know about homesteading, growing food, fermenting, composting, repurposing trash, and building began with tutorials found on the Internet. The friendships at our digital homesteader gathering were formed online.

Reconciling these seeming opposites led us to discussions about process, context, and the time we live in. Marginalized, living remotely, without the tie of connectivity offered by technology, we might each be able to reduce our own small footprint more than we already have. But we share a desire to have an effect on more than our individual lives. Technology helps us solve problems and share solutions.

Like Burning Man’s temporary city built on goods bought with money produced under the might of capital, our solutions are born out of the context of our time. Black Rock City’s gift economy created an example of sharing that impacted people the world over. Swap-O-Rama-Rama is an online community. Cities all over the world could not have used its model for repurposing textile waste if not for global connectivity. Some solutions designed to repair a modern world come with the aid of the technology it spawned.

Mikey and I believe that a world reclaimed by individual makers will be a better one than the world run by corporations because individual makers are not commodified. Corporations are bound by law to make decisions that produce the greatest profit for their shareholders. Profit-driven corporations disperse decision making across departments and formulize the process so that decisions with destructive outcomes are made by no single person. In corporations you’ll find people saying things like I just file the paperwork, I only check the pipe fittings, I install the computer systems, I just run the wiring, I only manage the budget, and My only job is purchasing the hardware. Ask the same individuals if they would dump toxic waste into a river and they’ll likely say no. But as employees of a corporation that dumps toxic waste into a river, they all play a tiny part even if they don’t realize it.

In contrast, individual makers are directly connected to outcomes. Free of the mandate of profit, they make decisions differently. Individuals have the luxury of considering life. A fundamental question we must ask is, Who has the power to make decisions that impact us all?

People alive today are tasked with transforming something already built, failing, and destructive into something better.

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