I've come to believe from everything I've been reading and paying attention to these last few months that these problems never would have come about if we hadn't lost our connections with nature. Right now we're so detached from the nutrient flows that keep us alive. We don't see or touch the food we eat until we find it on a shelf and chop it up on our kitchen counters. This also has to do with our absolute dependence on oil. The amount of energy required to sustain our current infrastructure is mind-boggling, and it's all because it's done behind the scenes, allowing companies to flourish under the guise of convenience at the cost of biodiversity, ecological equilibrium, and of humans' abilities to think for themselves.

I can't even finish this, there's just so fucking much I want to say.

Ban advertising!
Stop subsidizing corn!
Stop washing away topsoil while drenching our food in petrochemicals!
No more suburban Sprawl! (Way to fucking go, California!)
Restructure wastewater systems! So fucking much water goes down the drains that shouldn't.
Make gentler soaps and detergents!


There's way too much.

God everyone, please, wake up to what's happening around you! Everyone is so complacent and expects so much of their surroundings and are willing to give very little, it seems. I don't want to believe that's the case, as cynical as I usually am.

Everyone read Cradle to Cradle, Ecological Design, Field Notes from a Catastrophe, and Design by Nature.

They are eye-opening books that express very well what we have done to get to this point (design by nature), what the real consequences have been from these causes we've made (Field notes) and give a hopeful nearly play-by-play instructions on common-sense steps towards true sustainability. But I would actually read them in the order I listed them up there.

They certainly opened my and my housemate's eyes. We've become like those young folks in the '60s and '70s who want to learn to be closer to the land and move out to a rural area and learn to become self-sufficient. We plan to do this while living in Arcata or Eureka and going to Humboldt State. I figure once I'll learn exactly how to change the world, I'll do it. Move back to civilization, equipped with the knowledge that I am not a slave to the infrastucture and then I'll do what I can to make the infrastructure something I'd want to be a part of.

That's my goal, I guess.

There is just so much that is wrong with the world.