Betrayal

Somewhere deep in the chicken's dying brain is a deserving sense of betrayal that the hand that feeds it also has the capacity to behead it. Though she hadn't opened her eyes all afternoon, she died with them staring straight at me in a final understanding of the inherent cruelty of life. I fucking hate killing chickens. 

The Moral Mud of Sustainability

"...I'm starting to wonder if you are pro alternative energy or alternative government, anti GMO or anti capitalism, for the people or for the people that already have everything they need… to be honest your blogs don't really mesh that well, together that is. Your "ideals" are repetitive yet somehow seem all over the place. It's baffling and exhausting. However, I did enjoy your early blogs very much though (grit and progress)… I understand your passion but you have some karmic knots my friend, that perhaps only some much needed truly disconnected meditation can untie."

                 -Part of a string of 17 anonymous comments from my blog on Reforestation

January is the three year anniversary of my first blog post. When I first began writing in November 2010 (I didn't post until Jan 2011) I was recovering from being run over by a motor boat in the Kaiwi Channel. It was a transformative time for me (and still is) and I wrote in order to record the journey and clarify my thoughts as we transitioned to an off-grid life. As I began building my future home I immersed myself in the writings of Henry Thoreau, Masanobu Fukuoka, Bill Mollison, and Daniel Quinn. They clarified my draw to the land, they taught me that the best lessons come from nature, and they illustrated the failures of humanity. Combined with the fuck it social perspective that a near-death experience imparts, I wrote openly (as I still try to do). With the self-satisfying moral superiority gained by my religious devotion to the concept of sustainability, I was happy and life was simple. There was a right and there was a wrong. Planting nitrogen fixing pigeon pea was right, consuming genetically modified food was wrong. The pragmatic compromise of government was sickening to me, so I focused my writing on what I could directly impact: my land.

As I've written about before, the awareness of climate change forced me to adjust my perspective. My contribution to the problem wiped away my moral superiority. I, as everyone who lives in the developed world, am the problem. Living off-grid wasn't a solution and removing myself from society was even worse. As the hypocrisy of moral judgement fell out from beneath me, I was forced to re-evaluate my entrenched positions. And my writing evolved from simple yurt building and tree planting to what it is today; a painful wade through the moral swamp land of sustainability. The journey of my thoughts are akin to the American pacifist in World War II who is suddenly aware of the horrors of the Nazi regime and who's entire life philosophy is suddenly thrown into question. The morality of abstaining from war is worse than entering the war, yet both are abhorrent. We don't have the satisfaction of choosing between good and evil, right and wrong: we have a slew of shitty options. 

So, in that vein, I condemn industrial agriculture for its failures yet maintain that we need all tools to feed the world; I support genetic modification yet I practice permaculture and consume organic foods; I abstain from driving (whenever possible) to limit my carbon emissions yet I fly to O'ahu every other week for work; I write that capitalism is the cause of our problems yet I attribute its success to our explosion in productivity and resulting science, literature, and leisure time; I criticize government overreach yet advocate for stronger government authority as the sole hope in fighting climate change; I acknowledge my own privilege yet I write about the widening inequality gap; I am a hypocrite, but I'm trying. I'm not a saint or a politician, so my writing is fallible. Yes, it's a mixed bag of contradictions and I can't produce the simplified partisan themes and moral judgements that we are used to from the news and social media. The best I can do is muddle through and present my humble thoughts. Judging from the number of people that I've pissed off over the last year, not everyone wants to take that journey with me.

On that note, Happy New Year, and thank you for reading. I am deeply appreciative to everyone who follows along on my slow wade through the moral mud of sustainability.