9 Amazing Reasons To Be Optimistic

November 5, 2010 / Laura Grace Weldon / 3 Comments

If you could scroll through history searching for an era where you’d like to spend a lifetime, what would attract you?

Probably peace and prosperity. Probably a time when the arts flourish and science is open to new wonders. Probably too, a time period when people behave morally, care for one another, and uphold higher ideals than selfishness.

Does it make a difference to your answer if you don’t get to choose where on Earth you’ll be born? Into what class, gender, creed, and ability?

You’ll probably want to stay right here, right now.

Our 24 hour media attention on what’s terrifying and what’s superficial steers us away from the big picture. That picture, looking at the wider view, is actually pretty heartening.

1. War and global violence continue to decline.

Armed conflicts aren’t going up, they’re going down.

The world has seen a 70 percent decline in the number of high-intensity conflicts since the end of the Cold War era. Genocide is down 80 percent. Weapons sales between countries have diminished by 33 percent and the number of refugees has fallen by 45 percent. Even measuring from as little as 15 years ago, the number of armed conflicts has dropped from 44 to 28.

Why? Project Ploughshares credits peace building efforts.

Chances are, the reasons for peace are complex. Yet a stronger international resolve to focus on peace building and basic human rights is taking place. Imagine the far larger potential for enduring peace if we intentionally educate our children and ourselves in the proven methods of non-violence—-negotiation, mediation, reconciliation, even basic listening skills.

2. Freedom is stretching across the planet.

By evaluating variables including civil liberties, democratic institutions, and independent media it’s possible to assess how free each nation in the world really is. Back in 1973, 29 percent of nations were deemed free, 25 percent partially free, and 46 percent not free.

In a little over 35 years, the number of nations ruled by authoritarian regimes dropped from 90 to 30. Countries around the world considered to be free increased by 50 percent while those not free had dropped by more than half.

Independence has a long way to go. And what we may not recognize as positive signs—protests, dissent, political upheaval—may very well be ordinary people speaking up for freedom.

3. Affluence is on the increase.

A shifting focus away from war, conflict, and chaos means that countries are better able to meet the needs of their citizens. Those 151 countries deemed free or partly free account for 95 % of the world’s gross domestic production (GDP).

The number of people living in poverty has dropped by 500 million people, although most of those successes are in a few key countries. Since 1975 the world’s poor have seen their incomes grow faster than the world’s wealthy, meaning economic equality is increasing.

Of course, we make a mistake when we confuse affluence with well-being. After certain (surprisingly minimal) levels of health and safety are reached, money doesn’t buy happiness.

Current global conditions of institutional breakup, financial chaos, and environmental decline are exactly those which seem to be (slowly) leading to long-term beneficial change. Collectively we’re waking up to the limitations of short-term fixes and relentless economic expansion. Hopefully we’re also waking up to the reality that we’re in this together—rich and poor, developed and developing nations, young and old, left and right. We see in our own lives that what’s important can’t be measured by dollars alone. Things like good health, supportive relationships and a vital ecosystem.

There are plenty of other ways to define affluence. A fascinating measure of wealth lies in a quick look at how many hours of labor it once took the average worker to pay for light. In ancient Babylonia it took over 50 hours to pay for an hour of poor light from a sesame-oil lamp. At the start of the last century, it would have taken the average worker a thousand hours to earn the money to buy candles equaling the light of a single 100 watt bulb. Today’s high efficiency lighting costs us less than a second of work.

4. Fewer people are hungry.

Hunger continues to drop although we have a long way to go. It’s staggering to realize that 925 million people are chronically hungry. But according to The Improving State of the World: Why We’re Living Longer, Healthier, More Comfortable Lives on a Cleaner Planet by Indur Goklany, global food supplies increased 24 percent per capita in the last 40 years. In developing countries the food supply increased at an even greater rate, 38 percent more food per person. Since 1950, the real global price of food commodities has declined 75 percent.

No one should go hungry. The future of global food justice relies on efforts to restore and protect biodiversity, stop the spread of genetically modified crops, and assure water rights.

5. Longevity is improving yet total population faces a downturn

Fulfilling the cherished hopes of their parents, more children around the world are born healthy. Mortality rates for those under five years of age have fallen by 60 percent since 1960.

Meanwhile, life expectancy has risen 21 years since the mid 1950’s.

This doesn’t mean the planet will be too crowded. Overall population will continue to rise for several more decades but we’re facing a major downturn. Already birth rates are near or below replacement rate in countries all over the world. Increased education and affluence tend to inspire women, no matter what country they live in, to invest their time and resources in fewer children. As Fred Pearce clearly explains in The Coming Population Crash: and Our Planet’s Surprising Future, our little Earth will likely reach a (painful) peak of 8 billion people around the year 2040, then the total number of human will begin to decline so rapidly that nations will struggle to keep their populations levels from slipping too low. They may create perks for becoming parents and incentives to attract immigrants.

6. Health continues to improve.

Studies conducted by Robert W. Fogel, a Nobel laureate and economic historian at the University of Chicago, show that in a few hundred years human biology has changed in startling ways. We are more resistant to ill health, more likely to recover when faced with disease and less likely to live with chronic disability. We are also smarter and live longer. Fogel calls this radical improvement “technophysio evolution.”

An interview quotes Fogel as saying, “The phenomenon is not only unique to humankind, but unique among the 7,000 or so generations of human beings who have inhabited the earth.”

Fogel doesn’t necessary attribute the changes to genetic shifts. Improvements in medical care, nutrition, sanitation and working conditions may cause epigenetic changes. These are shifts in gene expression that can last through many generations without altering underlying DNA.

Information amassed by Fogel indicates that chronic diseases such as arthritis, heart disease and lung ailments are occurring 10 to 25 years later in life than they did 100 or 200 years ago. Interestingly, well-being may be more strongly affected by conditions each individual faces in utero and during the first few years of life than previously suspected.

These remarkable health gains don’t diminish our current struggles with cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer’s disease, autism and other serious health conditions on the increase. Despite the blessing of bodies more resilient and healthy than those of our ancestors of just 150 years ago we suffer the effects of environmental toxins and nutritionally inferior diets. To fully accept the gift of health and energy from our ancestors, we need to make the right choices to pass those benefits to our descendants.

7. Literacy rates continue to improve.

Global adult literacy rates have shot up from 56 percent in 1950 to nearly 84 percent today, the highest ever.

Women’s rates haven’t risen as quickly due to inequality and poverty, but in some areas, particularly East Asia, 90 percent more girls are able to read than 10 years ago. As female literacy goes up, other overall positive indicators tend to follow including decreased domestic violence, improved public health and greater financial stability.

8. Intelligence is on an upswing.

From generation to generation, we’re getting smarter. In fact, to accommodate continuously increasing intelligence the IQ test must be renormalized (standardized to keep the average test results at the 100). This is called the Flynn Effect.

Between 1932 and 1978, mean IQ scores in the U.S. rose 13.8 points. If your grandparent received IQ score results of 98 back in 1932 they’d have been deemed of average intelligence. That same grandparent, if administered today’s tests, would be considered to have a borderline mental disability by current scoring standards. IQ scores have risen even higher in some other countries. Of late, developing countries seem to be experiencing the biggest surge.

Plenty of explanations have been proposed, but the increase can’t be definitively pinned on genetic improvements, improved nutrition, greater familiarity with testing or better schooling.

According to Cornell professor Stephen J. Ceci, the most direct gains are not in subjects that are taught (math, vocabulary) but are shown in parts of the test that seem unrelated to schooling (matrices, detecting similarities). In fact, test gains have been enormous in areas requiring the child to apply his or her own reasoning, such as arranging pictures to tell a story or putting shapes in a series. Although teaching children does return positive results, what a child learns through the natural stimulation of everyday life has a more profound effect. For example, a study to determine the effect of schooling on rural children in India found that the increase in overall intelligence from a year of age is twice the increase from that of attending a year of school.

IQ test scores don’t relate to what truly provides satisfaction in life. But the Flynn Effect is intriguing. Factors we can’t completely explain are giving us the intellectual capacities to deal with an ever more challenging world.

9. Compassion is huge.

Never before in history have so many people worked tirelessly and selflessly to benefit others. Paul Hawken writes in Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming that the abolitionist movement was the first major movement by human beings to advocate on behalf of others without seeking advantage for themselves or their particular social or political group. Since that time, such efforts have grown with astonishing vigor.

There are now over a million organizations on the planet working for environmental stewardship, social justice, the preservation of indigenous cultures, and much more. These groups don’t seek wider acclaim, they seek to make a difference for the greater good.

Humanity, which is clever and kind enough to bring about so much improvement for one another, is awakening to the vital importance of living more sustainably on Earth. Unless we pull another planet out of the galaxy’s pocket in the next decade or two, we have to stop using up our precious blue green Earth. It’s time to turn our ingenuity to living well within our means. Peacefully, wisely, and with optimism.

Hand Globe image courtesy of HapciuMadam

Hummingbird image courtesy of PhapPuppy

Hay Now

July 6, 2010July 6, 2010 / Laura Grace Weldon / 1 Comment

This summer’s first cutting of hay is stacked in the barn. Seventeen acres of grasses transformed into golden squares, storing sun and soil’s energy for the winter ahead.

The unsung miracle of grass is a beautiful illustration of nature’s wisdom. Cows eating only grass flourish, turning these coarse blades, inedible to humans, into rich high-protein milk. This benefits the environment as well as the health of people drinking the milk of grassfed cows. To me, fields devoted to hay and pasture make sense while factory farms make no sense at all.

Hay isn’t a fancy crop.

It doesn’t bring much in the way of money. Some years we scramble because there’s too much rain and not enough time to harvest. But this perennial doesn’t just nourish a few of our favorite ruminants. It helps preserve topsoil.

The loss of soil to water erosion, called sedimentation, is measured in tons of soil loss per acre per year. This runaway soil clogs waterways, smothering aquatic life and affecting navigation. The denuded land left behind is robbed of fertility.

The importance of topsoil can’t be underestimated. According to Out of the Earth: Civilization and the Life of the Soil, the decline and fall of civilizations are based on soil fertility.

Nearly everything we eat relies on healthy soil, yet it takes 500 years for nature to produce an inch of topsoil. Current farming techniques increase soil erosion 10 to 40 percent greater than the rate nature can replace it. We’re running out of the very dirt our lives depend on.

The living skin of our Earth is thin, wildly complex and more interconnected than we might imagine. That’s why, when I look out over the woodlands on our land, the pastures our cattle graze on, the hayfields—I am reassured. The continuous ground cover of pasture or forest protects the soil. Perennial hay fields, pastures and woodlands allow organic matter to build naturally.

I have just a beginning grasp of the vital interplay between amoebae, fungi, bacteria, arthropods and plant roots in soil, enough to sense those bags of “sterilized potting mix” found in every big box store are a mockery of the lessons to be found in nature. I do grasp that we survive, in large part, through the life-giving nutrients of what has died. Organic material of all kinds decays into humus and that makes soil a story of resurrection, writ large.

books worth reading

Dirt: The Ecstatic Skin of the Earth by William Bryant Logan

Life in the Soil: A Guide for Naturalists and Gardeners by James B. Nardi

Teaming with Microbes: The Organic Gardener’s Guide to the Soil Food Web, Revised Edition by Jeff Lowenfels and Wayne Lewis

The Secret Life of Plants by Christopher Bird and Peter Tompkins

Me, a Radical Homemaker?

June 28, 2010May 3, 2021 / Laura Grace Weldon / 16 Comments

Okay, radical sounds hip. I can live with that. But homemaker? The last few decades that word has been a synonym for drudgery. Besides, ask my kids who really does the dusting and vacuuming around here. They do.

What’s radical homemaking? Shannon Hayes wrote a wonderful book called Radical Homemakers: Reclaiming Domesticity from a Consumer Culture. Yes, I thought when I heard the term. Naming something gives it momentum. And the lifestyles of people defining for themselves what The Good Life is all about haven’t gone unnoticed so much as undefined. It doesn’t seem radical in the slightest to many of us who try to live simply, it just makes sense.

Thankfully Shannon pulls the pieces together. As she writes,

…each of us has a calling or right livelihood that enables us to serve the common good, and in finding this calling, we will be most happy. Few, if any spiritual teachings call us to seek the accumulation of money, stuff, power, or other purely selfish interests. Further, in a life-serving economy, we individually accept responsibility for creating our own joys and pleasures. We do not rely upon corporate America to sell us these things. We take personal and collective responsibility for supplying many of our needs. In taking these steps, we discover that true economic assets, unlike money, are intangible.

There’s nothing new about this. Most of our foremothers and fathers upheld frugality and scorned excess. Throughout history people have been growing and preserving food, making gifts, providing hands-on care for the young and old, repurposing materials, and finding meaning in pleasures that aren’t necessarily linked to spending money.

This sort of lifestyle simmers along quietly and purposefully while consumer culture runs at a full boil, generating heat over every new trend and news flash.

Somehow, in a world bristling with radical homemakers, I’ve been outed as one of the representatives. “A poster child,” claimed the journalist who trekked out to our little farm with her notebook in hand last week. I’m more comfortable interviewing others rather than being interviewed, but I put my trust in her expertise. I thought it wouldn’t be too difficult to talk about trying to place our interests beyond the shallow values of appearance as I sat there wearing a thrift shop shirt that had to be 20 years old. Well, until the photographer showed up. Judging by the anxiety that generated I’m still the product of an appearance-indicates-worth society. The irony wasn’t lost on me. I gave up all hope of looking 20 pounds lighter or remotely put together and kept talking.

And laughing. Her questions struck me funny. In fact, she came right out and asked, “Don’t people treat you as if you’re odd?”

Maybe they do but I always thought that’s because I’m sarcastic and tend to sing songs with made-up lyrics.

I told her about homeschooling and the intrinsic value of meaningful learning. I told her about our local food co-op, about making homemade tinctures and about using things until they wear out.

I tried to explain why I preferred to make sandwich buns over the weekend for a party here rather than buy them. “Was it part of your philosophy?” she asked. “Was it cheaper?”

I haven’t priced such buns at a store, I told her. I ground the grain, used eggs from our chickens, milk from our cow, and honey from our bees, then kneaded the dough and baked them that morning. It cost almost nothing in ingredients and very little in time. Yet it had more to do with deeper choices. But don’t write about the buns, I said, it makes me sound really annoying.

I’m sure I’m annoying (just ask my kids) but also I’m pretty relaxed. I’m comfortable with weeds in the garden (nature doesn’t like bare dirt anyway) and stacks of reading material everywhere. I make homemade pizza all the time but that doesn’t mean we don’t occasionally succumb to the greasy allure of what my kids call “real pizza” from a little carry out nearby. We don’t have money for things like vacations or video games, we do have time to sit around talking long after dinner is over.

When I was fresh out of college I planned to save the world. I’m beginning to see it’s possible to do so, simply by saving what’s important right in front of us.

Postscript: Thankfully I’m a small part of the finished article. After the other radical homemaker piece I’ve been interviewed for in Ladies Home Journal, I’m saying no to future interviews. Why? Because it’s titled “Extreme Housewives.” (The promo reads, “A small but passionate group of women across America have embraced the kind of back-to-basics homemaking our grandmothers did-from scratch, by hand, grown in the backyard. And they’ve never been happier.” Oy vey.

Is Nature Somewhere Else?

June 15, 2010April 24, 2023 / Laura Grace Weldon / 12 Comments

We tend to think of nature as separate. We imagine spending time “out there” hiking in some remote wilderness, drinking from mountain streams and observing creatures that have never faced highway traffic. There, in a place far from our busy lives, we might find peace, tranquility and some kind of deep connection to what is real.

If. We. Just. Found. Time. To. Get. There.

That’s part of the problem. Because we’re already there. We are nature, right down to the life processes of every cell. And what’s around us even in the smallest city apartment? Nature.

Nature is the food we eat, air we breathe, water we drink. It’s seedlings pushing up between cracks in the cement (and the cement itself, depending how you define it), birds lighting on utility poles, pollen making us sneeze, storm clouds swelling with rain. It’s a living planet in a universe of natural laws that continue to be revealed.

When we define nature as separate from us it’s easier to push it aside as something apart from our very life force. This disconnect isn’t healthy for us or the planet.

In part it simply has to do with SEEING. I learned this when I helped conduct a psychology study in college. We went to urban office buildings and asked people two questions. First, we asked each person to describe his or her mood. Second, we asked them to describe the current appearance of the sky. These people were in their offices or hallways when we talked to them and the windows in most buildings were shuttered with horizontal blinds ubiquitous during that decade, so the only way they could have described the sky is if they had paid attention on their way to work or during a break. Here’s the interesting part. The people who identified themselves as pessimistic, angry, depressed or in other negative terms were also the ones unable to describe the sky’s appearance. You guessed it. The happiest and most optimistic people either correctly described the sky or came very close.

That study was never published, but research continues to show that pausing to experience nature in our daily lives has a powerfully positive effect on our minds and bodies. Just a few minutes of regular exposure leads us to be more generous, creative, and enlivened.

So wherever we are, let’s pay attention. Let’s remind ourselves to look at the sky every day, not just for a moment but long enough to savor it (without declaring the weather good or bad). Let’s put our bodies into the experience by taking regular strolls and touching the bark of a tree, a flower’s soft petal, the texture of a rock. Let’s watch the habits of birds, squirrels, spiders and other creatures making their lives amongst ours. Let’s pick one tree near our homes and notice it as the seasons pass, as we would a quiet friend sharing the same neighborhood. It takes only a shift of awareness, but it can make a world of difference.

Nature is right here, moment to moment, in each breath we take. It connects us to what’s real and helps us be the people our planet needs right now.

Going to Hope in a Handbasket

January 4, 2010October 29, 2010 / Laura Grace Weldon / 3 Comments

“Not only is another world possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.” Arundhati Roy

Fear sells. Blood and guts sell even better. What really grabs our attention? Out and out panic. That largely explains today’s so-called news channels, talk radio, actually much of commercial media. The worse it sounds, the greater audience share they grab and the more money they make. Trouble is, they also make up minds and harden hearts and plant misery where optimism could so easily flourish.

But they’re wrong.

Sure, it seems we’re in big trouble. Structures we count on to be stable are crumbling—finance, health care, education, consumption driven economies, us versus them mentalities, you name it.

Remember the parable of the mighty oak and thin reeds? The oak boasted of his immense girth and height, mocking the reeds all around him for their weaknesses. But the reeds could withstand wind, lightening and the weight of snow. The oak succumbed while the reeds survived, stronger than the oak in their ability to bend and stand again. Big institutions are fighting transparency, reform or annihilation with everything they’ve got, believing that strength means rigidity. Meanwhile a shift is happening on the grassroots level, as flexible and self-correcting as reeds in the wind.

Times of change are destabilizing and difficult, but ultimately valuable. After all, what’s broken, corrupt or simply no longer workable must be fully revealed before it’s healed or transformed into something much better.

Look more closely. Things are getting better all the time. In fact amazing evidence shows that we’ve long been on the path to health and harmony. Here are a few examples.

We’re Smarter.

Intelligence continues to increase from generation to generation. In fact, to accommodate continuously increasing intelligence the IQ test must be renormalized (standardized to keep the average test results at the 100). This is called the Flynn Effect.

Between 1932 and 1978, mean IQ scores in the U.S. rose 13.8 points. If your grandparent received IQ score results of 98 back in 1932 they’d have been deemed of average intelligence. That same grandparent, if administered today’s tests, would be considered to have a borderline mental disability by current scoring standards. IQ scores have risen even higher in some other countries: 27 points in the UK between 1942 to 1992. Of late, developing countries seem to be experiencing the biggest surge.

Many explanations have been proposed, but the increase can’t be definitively pinned on genetic improvements, improved nutrition, greater familiarity with testing or better schooling.

According to Cornell professor Stephen J. Ceci, the most direct gains are not in subjects that are taught (math, vocabulary) but are shown in parts of the test that seem unrelated to schooling (matrices, detecting similarities). In fact, test gains have been enormous in areas requiring the child to apply his or her own reasoning, such as arranging pictures to tell a story or putting shapes in a series. Although teaching children does return positive results, what a child learns through the natural stimulation of everyday life has a more profound effect. For example, a study to determine the effect of schooling on rural children in India found that the increase in overall intelligence from a year of age is twice the increase from that of attending a year of school.

We’re Healthier.

An interview in the University of Chicago Magazine quotes Fogel as saying, “The phenomenon is not only unique to humankind, but unique among the 7,000 or so generations of human beings who have inhabited the earth.”

Fogel’s most dramatic proof of technophysio evolution was found by comparing Civil War veterans to subsequent generations. Researchers examined health and longevity data of 45,000 Union Army veterans, including over 6,000 black soldiers. Military records revealed that young American men of that era commonly suffered debilitating health conditions. Approximately 65 percent of men from 18 to 25 years of age volunteered for the Union Army. But arthritis, tuberculosis, cardiovascular disease and blindness disqualified a quarter of them. And the military of that era wasn’t choosy. Incontinence and blindness in one eye didn’t disqualify a recruit. Even the youngest men lived with chronic disabilities. Fully one-sixth of volunteers between 16 to 19 years of age were rejected for serious health conditions.

By the time Civil War vets passed the age of 65, 68 percent of them suffered from arthritis, 76 percent from heart disease and over 50 percent from back problems. World War II veterans at the same age, in contrast, counted among their ranks 48 percent as arthritis sufferers, 39 percent with heart disease and 30 percent with back problems.

These remarkable health gains don’t diminish our current struggles with cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer’s disease, autism and other serious health conditions on the increase. Despite the blessing of bodies more resilient and healthy than those of our ancestors of just 150 years ago we suffer the effects of environmental toxins and nutritionally squalid diets. To fully accept the gift of health and energy from our ancestors, it seems we must expand our awareness to make positive changes here and now. That way our choices continue to benefit our descendants.

We’re More Peaceful.

We function best through cooperation and harmony. Even our body systems are in greatest sync when we are peaceful, according to studies at the Heart Math Institute. It may be taking us quite a while, as a species, to get accustomed to living in larger settled groups but it seems we’ve come a long way in the last few centuries.

And peace is how our species has come this far, despite what history tells us. According to anthropologist Douglas Fry, evidence shows that for 98 percent of human existence on earth we lived in small nomadic bands that thrived precisely because warfare was avoided. He presents compelling proof in his book, Beyond War: The Human Potential for Peace
along with the message that human beings have highly developed capacities to seek and maintain peace.

Psychologist Steven Pinker points out in an essay titled “A History of Violence” that public cat burnings were a popular form of entertainment in the sixteenth century. Although we pay more attention to atrocities now than ever before, the horrors of slavery, genocide, barbaric punishment and vigilante justice were accepted as commonplace a little more than a century ago.

Empathy for people of another race or class? Not a typical attribute even a few generations ago. Pinker notes, “Conventional history has long shown that, in many ways, we have been getting kinder and gentler.”

As Pinker cites specific data, the good news gets better. For example, the homicide rate has declined from a rampant 24 murders per 100,000 Englishmen in the 14^th century to 0.6 per 100,000 in the 1960’s (5.4 per 100,000 in the U.S. in 2008).

No matter what the angle, the view is good when we look at more recent U.S. history through this lens as well. Despite what ranting pundits and blaring news promos may indicate, crime rates have been steadily dropping per capita since the 1970’s. Some analysts say by as much as 50 percent in 15 years. Despite staggering economic losses, crime has continued to decline recently.

The ecumenical organization Project Ploughshares reports, “Peacebuilding efforts do work. Although one conflict is too many for those being killed and wounded, there has been a significant decrease in the number and intensity of armed conflicts over the past 10 years.”

We’ve come a long way without direct efforts to educate each person in the ways of negotiation, mediation, intervention, reconciliation, heck, even listening skills. Imagine turning our attention toward cooperation and mutual respect. Surely acknowledging the human tendency toward peace welcomes greater possibilities for harmony in the years to come.

We Care.

Never before in history have so many people worked tirelessly and selflessly to benefit others. Paul Hawken writes in Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Social Movement in History Is Restoring Grace, Justice, and Beauty to the World
that the abolitionist movement was the first major movement by human beings to advocate on behalf of others without seeking advantage for themselves or their particular social or political group. Since that time, such efforts have grown with astonishing vigor.

Artist Chris Jordan has made a mandala of the names of those million-plus organizations. His work is inspiring—-make sure you look at the images up close as well as the whole picture.

It’s time to turn our attention away from doom-shrieking media. While it’s valuable to be informed, such knowledge is useful only to the extent that it motivates us to turn more consciously in a positive direction.

A heavy heart, or worse, a hardened heart, makes it nearly impossible to raise a child or plant a garden or grow a benevolent future.

Creative Commons image

Getting and Giving, Big Time

December 12, 2009December 12, 2009 / Laura Grace Weldon / 3 Comments

We haven’t gotten this far through brutal force or greed.

Nope. It has taken cooperation, curiosity and cleverness.

Ninety-nine percent of our time on earth as a species has been spent as hunter-gatherers. Our ancestors wouldn’t have survived without collaborating to find food, raise children and stay safe from large predators.

This is still true now no matter what 24 hour news channels tell us. Each moment of the day we’re more likely to react with compassion, calm interest or cleverness than with any form of overt negativity.

Cooperative efforts abound all around us. Perhaps we simply need to look at life-enhancing innovations we take for granted in a new way. Consider these examples.

Want to travel the world finding friendly strangers offering you a place to sleep for free? You can through CouchSurfing. Their motto encourages everyone to “Participate in Creating a Better World, One Couch at a Time.” Started in 2004, this non-profit network has connected travelers with locals in 232 countries. This has resulted in nearly 3 million positive experiences, almost 2 million reported as friendships. People who never would have met are connecting, sharing experiences and developing greater cultural understanding.

How about Freecycle? Nearly 7 million members across the world make up this grassroots, non-profit movement of people who give and get goods for free in their own communities. The Freecycle Network, which started humbly in 2003, says, “Our mission is to build a worldwide gifting movement that reduces waste, saves precious resources & eases the burden on our landfills while enabling our members to benefit from the strength of a larger community.”

Or consider books set free to find new readers. Since 2001, BookCrossing members in more than 130 countries have shared millions of books with strangers. They’ve also enjoyed the treasure-hunt pleasure of finding books they want to read. It’s all part of an innovative network linking books and readers. More local book-sharing concepts are springing up everywhere. Recently a small town in the UK transformed an unused phone booth into a book exchange. They outfitted the booth with shelves and waited to see if anyone would participate. Residents continue to share books and movies anonymously at the booth, which is always open.

Maybe you need a bigger example. There’s always the Internet. Harvard Law professor Jonathan Zittrain notes in a TED talk that the net itself is built by millions of “disinterested acts of kindness” and based on trust, curiosity and reciprocity.

Giving and collaborating seem to be an intrinsic part of human nature. That may be why people freely share their expertise by editing Wikipedia entries, providing support online or otherwise helping people they’ll never meet via the net. That may be why giving inspires people to greater heights of generosity or creative expression, even when the act remains anonymous. The blogosphere abounds with art, craft and music exchanges. Increasingly this is taking place IRL more often too. In October an art collective calling themselves the Future Machine transformed an unused newspaper box into a “Stranger Exchange.” Located in Boston, the box features simple instructions on the side.

1. Leave an item; 2. Take an Item and 3. Don’t be a Stranger.

Their website offers a simple way to link people who give and take items in the box. Items in the box have included a map of Luxembourg, AA batteries and an invitation to a long ago New Year’s Eve party. They’ve also included projects created specifically for Stranger Exchange such as artwork and a mix tape made in response to another mix tape found in the box.

A post about this phenomenon by Rachael Botsman noted, “Interestingly, the early ‘members’ of the Stranger Exchange seem be participating for similar intrinsic motivations that are fueling the open peer-to-peer movements such as Flickr, Wikipedia, BitTorrent, BePress and so on. For these systems to keep flourishing, people need to “give before they get,” a dynamic that is built on a new kind of trust, trust in people you don’t know or are not even friends with.

This in turn reinforces certain behaviors—collaboration, kindness, openness and honor—that are critical for sharing to happen between strangers. What’s interesting is that once people participate in these exchanges, they experience the proverbial “warm inner glow” and they crave that experience again. In other words, the altruistic action and indirect reciprocity becomes self-reinforcing.”

Botsman is co-author of a book coming out next fall titled What’s Mine is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption. I’m looking forward to what the book will tell us about the rise in sharing, trading, gifting and swapping in communities around the world. I suspect it will have to do with the cooperation, curiosity and cleverness—-the foundations of our early survival and the building blocks of our shared future.

Creative Commons photo courtesy of Erica Reid’s Flickr photostream

Edible Knowledge

October 18, 2009January 29, 2010 / Laura Grace Weldon / Leave a comment

cherrytomatoes Living on a farm we can’t help but be connected to the food on our table. We’re by no means perfect when it comes to eating locally. We’ll never come close unless chocolate and coffee start sprouting up in Ohio.

While more of us are paying attention to adopting better habits for our own health and planetary health, it’s easy to overlook the vital and wondrous learning that is directly related to food. For my family, those lessons often have to do with shared experiences.

~Many years we head out to pick apples together on a bright fall day. After an indulgent week of eating and baking with as many apples as possible, we devote a day to applesauce. We cook the remaining bushels of fruit down, cranking Grandma’s Victorio strainer that pushes with sauce out one side and pulp out the other (pulp eagerly eaten by the chickens), then can jars of applesauce to eat all winter long.

~We have encouraged each child to choose his or her own “crop” to plant and tend in the vegetable garden. Harvesting and sharing the bounty of one’s own fresh green beans teaches the satisfaction of work right along with lessons in botany and soil health.

~We try recipes from around the world, not only while learning about other cultures, but also because we freely trade garden bounty with friends, and have to do something with unfamiliar herbs, roots and fruits.

~We visit nearby farms. Observation and conversations with those who live on the land have been instructive, teaching us practices we want to emulate and those we hope to avoid.

~We eat meals together every day. Cooking frugally by choice as well as necessity has brought us myriad conversations about health, trends, politics and defining worth for ourselves. Of course our meals also precipitate family humor related to home ground grains that result in breads darker than wet cardboard and yes, we’ve had one or two loaded spatula chases around the kitchen. Oh wait, that didn’t involve the kids, just me thinking it might be funny to fling frosting at my husband.

~Unintentionally we learn by making plenty of mistakes. Ordering 25 pounds of organic buckwheat from the food co-op before knowing if anyone would eat it, raising our first flock of turkeys on faith more than fact, repeatedly attempting to make cheddar cheese although we can’t maintain the temperature needed to age it, well, this list could go on.

10 Things We Should Teach Every Kid About Food, recently posted on Every Kitchen Table, offers a handy list of important food-related categories to explore with our children. The ideas are important and too often overlooked, such as the precepts of the industrial food system and the insidious effect of food advertising.

Here are some related resources:

Improve School Lunches With Locally Grown Food This article offers information plus strategies to bring positive change to your school district, whether you have children in school or not.

Don’t Buy It A non-profit site with learning games to help kids evaluate and analyze media messages.

I Buy Different A website sponsored by New Dream and World Wildlife Fund with tools to help tweens and teens be, live, and buy differently to make a difference.

Roots, Shoots, Buckets & Boots: Gardening Together with Children

I Love Dirt!: 52 Activities to Help You and Your Kids Discover the Wonders of Nature

What are some ways that learning, growing and eating work best in your family?

Learning from Wisdom of Elder Farmers

October 9, 2009January 29, 2010 / Laura Grace Weldon / 1 Comment

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The sight of Ron’s farm is like a quiet blessing. I wait for my first glimpse of it over the rise of a hill each time I take the dogs for a walk down our street. The house and several outbuildings are in shambles, but that’s because Ron puts his energy into keeping his small dairy farm going.

His herd of around fifty Ayrshire, Holstein, Guernsey and Brown Swiss graze on pasture so lush that the grasses sway in the wind. Many of the old fence posts surrounding the fields are wire-wrapped osage orange and hickory trunks, since farmers a few generations ago knew these durable woods would serve while alive and long after.

Ron puts his cows out on pasture each spring by a calculation that remains a mystery to me, something to do with phases of the moon. He adheres to other timeworn methods that aren’t fancy enough to be termed eco-friendly or green. For example, Ron drives his old car back to the hayfield before it’s time to cut. He walks through the field handpicking weeds that aren’t good for his cows. He doesn’t confine his cows year round, dose them with production-boosting hormones or follow any other agricultural trends.

Ron’s back is bent; his face is weathered and creased into a permanent smile. Already he looks like his father, Herb, who died a few years ago, probably already in his nineties. We asked Herb’s advice back when we first started farming. Herb told us he’d walked over to see our cows a few times, meaning he’d hiked through fields and woods to reassure himself that all was well.

How many of us can still benefit from the benevolent instinct of a neighboring farmer? How many are lucky enough to learn from examples of those who are deeply rooted, as Lisa Hamilton’s wonderful new book Deeply Rooted: Unconventional Farmers in the Age of Agribusiness is aptly named?

Dairy farms all over the country are selling cows, selling land and going out of business. The price they are being paid is about the same as it was in the 1970’s, although feed and fuel is much higher. Government aid under consideration for small farms is steered to prompt farmers into selling cows, meaning even more milk will come from huge confinement agricultural operations. Losing small farms also means that the wisdom of farmers like Ron will be left behind at an ever faster pace. This includes specific wisdom about the land and wider wisdom about ways to live.

True connection to the land is so easily crushed beneath the weight of society’s pressing demand for immediate gratification and quick profits. But then, much is lost. As Pierre Teilhard de Chardin said, “This palpable world, which we are used to treating with the boredom and disrespect with which we habitually regard places with no sacred association, is a holy place.”

Perhaps most obviously, common sense is lost. Small farms are actually more efficient. The Institute for Food and Development Policy amassed available data from every country to compare productivity of smaller farms versus larger farms (total output of agricultural products per unit area — per acre or hectare.) Their research showed that smaller farms are anywhere from 200 to 1,000 percent more productive.

Ron’s son-in-law and grandson help on the farm, but his family talks to him about getting out of the business. They know he’s losing money. Ron says that he watched his father go through hard times and he learned that the way you stay farming is to hang on. So he’s hanging on.

Ron’s rootedness to his farm and his land is part of who he is, like the farmer Gene Logsdon describes in a recent blog post “…he is a last member of an ancient tribe—the genuine traditional farmers who committed themselves lovingly to a piece of land and husbanded it from generation to generation, carrying in their memories a lifetime of their own experiences and that of their fathers and grandfathers on that land.”

So today I will walk in his direction, grateful for Ron’s farm. I’ll pay attention to the sight of cows resting in tall grass and the sound of a slack board on the house creaking in the breeze, hoping perhaps each thing we look upon with love somehow is more likely to endure.