Welcome, Hector! Do your parents have a garden? If they do could you grow some vegetables in it? It would make a good change from the writing and give you some food. The ability to feed yourself by your own efforts is really empowering and so very worth while.
Start with a few salad plants grown between the existing plants and progress from there. Even a window box of salads can provide a useful supplement to your diet. See if you can get an allotment as you progress.
Best of luck anyway.
The future: not as it was promised to be?
Moderator: Peak Moderation
-
kenneal - lagger
- Site Admin
- Posts: 14287
- Joined: 20 Sep 2006, 02:35
- Location: Newbury, Berkshire
- Contact:
-
emordnilap
- Posts: 14814
- Joined: 05 Sep 2007, 16:36
- Location: here
It's maybe worth starting (everyone, not just Hector) with this 12-minute video and then asking yourself if it inspires you to do something.
I experience pleasure and pains, and pursue goals in service of them, so I cannot reasonably deny the right of other sentient agents to do the same - Steven Pinker
emordnilap: thanks for posting that video. Most of what he says resonates with my current feelings, and he expresses them with a lot more clarity. I'm not as clued-up as Eisenstein, so I find it pertinent that the most persuasive - and I believe true - part of the film is when he says that children have an inate sense that Monday morning shouldn't be something they come to hate. I'm going to read the book and delve more into the subject; it seems to present something tangible to aim for with a healthy balance between realism and optimism to a culture that seems to be lacking much of both.
-
2 As and a B
- Posts: 2590
- Joined: 28 Nov 2008, 19:06
Well I was going to recommend reading whilst you ponder the absurdity of it all but I see that you are a postgrad in English and do plenty of reading as it is. Still, reading is good. Books explain life. I'd recommend non-fiction reading about how we got here and to ignore anything like fiction or proposed solutions. I've read so many good analyses of the situation that have been concluded with unrealistic solutions that totally ignore the human nature amply described in the analysis!
History, archaeology, anthropology, philosophy and accounts of the environment of the past are real pointers. We've been here before, human nature hasn't changed, and we will have a (now, because society has become so complex) MASSIVE collapse.
Learn how to grow food, if you don't know already. It's very easy but takes a few years to gain the knowledge as one has to wait for the seasons to come round (teaches patience and long-view as well). try selling the surplus. Some fruit and veg are incredibly expensive in the shops for what they are - courgettes, beans, raspberries. The plants grow by themselves and produce masses of food - over a period of time. It is that long harvest time that makes them expensive in the shops as they are labour intensive and tie up the use of the land for another crop but if you've got, say, 5 courgettes a day to sell at 50p each (vs. about £1 in the shops) then you're quids in!
And learn to make and mend things, anything really, as long as it is useful and preferably tradeable.
And be true to yourself. Do what you feel is right even if it turns out not to be the best choice. We can none of us know what the future holds and regrets, well, I've had a few...
History, archaeology, anthropology, philosophy and accounts of the environment of the past are real pointers. We've been here before, human nature hasn't changed, and we will have a (now, because society has become so complex) MASSIVE collapse.
Learn how to grow food, if you don't know already. It's very easy but takes a few years to gain the knowledge as one has to wait for the seasons to come round (teaches patience and long-view as well). try selling the surplus. Some fruit and veg are incredibly expensive in the shops for what they are - courgettes, beans, raspberries. The plants grow by themselves and produce masses of food - over a period of time. It is that long harvest time that makes them expensive in the shops as they are labour intensive and tie up the use of the land for another crop but if you've got, say, 5 courgettes a day to sell at 50p each (vs. about £1 in the shops) then you're quids in!
And learn to make and mend things, anything really, as long as it is useful and preferably tradeable.
And be true to yourself. Do what you feel is right even if it turns out not to be the best choice. We can none of us know what the future holds and regrets, well, I've had a few...
I'm hippest, no really.