Mandate for Freedom: How to Be a Producer, Not a Consumer

We live in a consumer society, where we buy our water and pay for the privilege of using the toilet. We collect nothing except bills and money. We reuse only when it is convenient and glorify the disposable. We wait on other people for our living, accepting the scraps of what they control so we can meet the deadlines they have imposed. We spin our whole lives chasing advertisements without pausing to wonder whether we need anything we are striving for.

We need to stop. Now.

Consumption is reverting to being an infant, where we are dependent on the whims of others for our care and sustenance. It is demeaning to the human psyche and an embarrassment to our technological and philosophical advancement.

This is the generation when consumption has to end.

Our resources are limited. Moore's Law (computing power doubles every eighteen months) is slowing or stalling. Oil is increasingly expensive to produce. The bees are dying. American agriculture would collapse if fossil fuels were to disappear, and far, far too much of the world imitates American agriculture.

So, we need to change our lifestyle on a societal and civilizational level. And we must do it without abandoning the technological inventions that have drastically improved our lives. We must do it in a way that is pro-science, not anti-science.

We have to return to a production-oriented society.

We need to start with the basics. Maslow's hierarchy of needs is very helpful in defining these basics.

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The bottom tier is for the most basic of all needs: food, water, warmth (or shelter) and rest. This is the place where our consumption society is most obvious and most insidious. For instance, I can produce a potato for a few cents in a very simple bucket system, or I can pay almost twenty cents at a supermarket. We consume water, and there's no real way to alter that, but for a civilization that regularly mans the International Space Station we do little to recycle the water all around us. We pay exorbitant amounts of money for spacious dwellings where we live alone, thinking somehow this speaks volumes about our personalities or personal merits. We sleep less and less, viewing it as a sign of being a hard worker and good consumer.

We need to invert this system. We need to begin thinking about producing our own food. I am not calling for everyone to buy a farm, however. We need to use the container gardening and permaculture techniques developed, ironically, by NASA and weed growers to produce at least a portion of our own food. It's remarkably easy to grow some types of food if you set up the system correctly. There's a lot of room for variation, but between hydroponics systems, container gardening and keyhole gardening, almost anyone can grow some food. The return on seeds and soil is exponential. You can buy seeds for a few cents, and the soil will cost you $16 at most. In return, you can produce a lot of food. You may not cover all of your food needs, but the satisfaction from knowing that you made dinner, along with the money you saved, will go a long way towards prepping you for greater productive societal endeavors.

Similarly, water is hard to produce but easy to capture. I am not calling, mind you, for the abandonment of municipal water hookups. But I am saying that we can reuse the water we do have. There are various systems for moisture farming as well. However, there are other ways to use water in our houses in order to be more productive. There is a lot of falling water in a given house - from the sink, from the shower, and so forth. Falling water is the basis for hydroelectric power, and although there's only a few watts in each use, someone can produce a system that would allow that type of energy capture.

Shelter is the biggest expense in our society. Buying a house is expensive and renting requires a very complex relationship. Both of these relationships - buying and renting - are consumptive. Ownership has been constructed in such a way that it requires the purchaser to consumer the structure and resources, often without the legal permission or skills to add or develop anything on the land or structure.

However, you have a great big temperature controlled structure perfect for growing finicky crops. Do you really, really enjoy a gourmet mushrooms? Spend a few dollars on sawdust and buckets and $10 for the spawn and grow your own. Learn to make beer. Make your own furniture out of some wood (this is not as easy as it sounds, but worth the effort). Or maybe you think there's something in those essential oils claims, but don't want to pay a massive overhead. Grow your own lavender and make your own. The experience alone will be worth the time and limited money, and you may derive a benefit from it as well.

This only leaves rest for the most basic needs. Rest is something that should definitely not be mined for productivity. In fact, our society needs more of it. We need more restfulness in the midst of our productivity. We need to produce restful moments.

This can be the necessary moment of restful conversation in the middle of a work day. Stopping for a moment to chat with a coworker about nothing work related will not only make life easier, it could also refocus you for the task ahead. However, the production of rest will require larger scale changes. We as a society need to stop prizing billable hours and start prizing sociable hours. This means that work has to be not only accepting of sociability, but recognize that often the seemingly pointless talk is actually a way of problem-solving.

I will look at the portions of the hierarchy of needs in further posts. This is the beginning, though. Don't be a consumer. Make your own life. Be free.