Has it made us happy? An off-grid subscriber writes: Once the Western world has forsaken the “American Dream” sales propaganda as its standard of achievement, the day we come back down from the “Magic Enchantment” Disney-like world sold to us by advertisers, once the propagandized “Ideal Lifestyle” from the commercial architecture magazines are recognized for the sales pitches they are, separated from realities of everyday North American life, we will build zero operating-cost, zero-maintenance, environmentally-friendly, practical, survival shelter-accented, realistically-sized homes.
These will come complete with LED powered greenhouses, aquaculture spaces, composting rooms, gardens, water conservation features, solar orientation, super-insulation to cut heating/cooling costs, Wind Power generators in good locations, Solar collectors, ground heat storage considerations, and payable mortgages. No “Amana Corp” power sucking fancies, self-cleaning ovens, double oven stoves, resistance element coils, automatic dish washers, counter top energy sucking toys, no ice maker doors on inefficient induction motor driven fridges.
We need fewer massive cabinet displays, less Glorious Lighting Displays, more LED lighting used in practical ways, no vaulted ceilings, fewer Magical staircases, no 2 1/2 inch deep synthetic white rugs, no triple bathroomed floors, no more microwave/convection cookers.
We need new, Einstein cycle solar powered refrigeration, wastewater/graywater recouping, dry Swedish toilets, composters built in, room for Solar panels, rechargeable batteries, charging stations, more triple glazed solar oriented practical heat gaining windows, more straw bale style insulation values, and mostly survivability in the hard times, and for retirement on very low incomes, built right into the home-investment.
Look for newfangled, high efficiency wind generators, battery utility vehicles, battery rechargeable lawn mowers with no built in planned obsolescence.
We may even see homes without the 18th c entury British styled royalty imitating lawns, and food gardens in their place!
Everyone, having learned from the great republican depression, we have now only sampled the outer edges of, will develop a taste for practical realities far stronger than the pull of the propaganda and traditions of a day gone by, and adapt to off-grid, independent lifestyles, or parish in deep debt in a vain effort to maintain the non-sustainable lifestyle that has passed, certainly Detroit City, and soon the rest of America by! The end of the “Cheap Oil Era” is next upon us, and we have no wood to burn, just a bit of coal, for which we have no stoves!
Solar, Wind, Wave, Hydro, Tidal, and Geothermal are not our “Last resorts” they are our ‘only’ resorts! Nuclear fission, once started, is only one human error from Armageddon, and creates wastes that can kill off all mankind in a few greedy generations! Until the Chinese scholars figure that one out, we must go with the sustainable, renewable, or “Perpetual” if you like, clean powers of nature to survive less glorious, but safer and happy lives.
Check your bank account, Yankee Doodle, can you afford otherwise?
6 Responses
I do think in about a decade that many if not most of the “human race” will die off.
But… the ones that WILL survive are the very ones that were smart enuf to invest in the tools that were/are sustainable and/or less noticeable to the dummies.
The best of the human race love other species that are useful.
Whether or not the other species love us is immatareal.
Bad things are very likely to happen much sooner than we think… just consider who will benefit from the choices that you are forced to make. Your offspring, or the prevailing government/gang? Who have their own offspring to consider?
Let’s face it, all this eco-babble is a bunch of bullshit. The only solution to the ecological crisis is mass extintion of the human race. This is inevitable. There are simply far too many of us here. We are like a virus, multiplying out of control. We have created technology and laws to protect those people whom nature would not select. You ever hear of a wolf going on trial for murder? We have robbed nature of her right. But nature is more powerful than us. Either we will destroy Earth, or Earth will destroy us. I believe the latter is much more likely, but either way, a lot of people are gonna die. All your “LED powered greenhouses, aquaculture spaces, composting rooms, gardens, water conservation features, solar orientation, super-insulation to cut heating/cooling costs, Wind Power generators in good locations, Solar collectors, ground heat storage considerations,” etc. won’t do anything. There are too many people. And eventually, Earth will kill us off and return to it’s natural state of Anarchy.
I’ve felt for years that the “home”/mortgage thing was a big trap, a scam, that hardly minescually amounts of people even begin to comprehend, let alone question.
How sad to tell you that I could find no alternative to that trap… and even if I did, my first mate/wife would surely make my further life an abortive hell.
In the Bible it says that it’s the LOVE of money that is the root of all evil… I say that for once the ignorant folk had it right – money is the root of all evil.
Go ahead and try to set up your utopian good-for-the-earth household anywhere in a “civilized” (taxable) area… soon as they find it, THEY will destroy it.
Only 26 and 3/4 years left on my mortgage…
It’s time, brothers and sisters!
I agree. I am all for what you said.
Food gardens, houses that make sense and are affordable? C’mon – you’ve got to be joking, this is AMERICA! Land of the loafer, and home of the dumb (consumer).