Providing for ourselves

The capitalist system is sinking and it is crucial that we find life boats immediately. Forget about Obama changing anything, we don't have time to wait for his false hope, we need real change and real action now. We need to redevelop our social skills and group together in our communities and find ways to provide for each other's needs now. As the financial system crashes under the weight of its own fraud, the ability of nations to maintain social control and provide for their populations will dry up.

This is why it is incredibly important that we all unlearn the unsustainable lifestyles that we've come to expect as ‘standard' and develop our own sustainable autonomous communities.

If we are isolated when this pyramid scam comes crashing down on us we'll have no chance of pulling through, so we need to organize now. We need to think of what it would take to live outside of capitalism and the state because we will soon be forced to. It is on us to make that a change for the better. We need food. Food is a human right, and there is more than enough to feed everyone, the problem is what we eat and how we distribute it. We can't rely on food shipped from halfway around the world, we need to be able to provide food for our communities IN our communities. We need community gardens everywhere, and we need to learn how to cook with local ingredients. We need to reclaim monoculture industrial farms and replace them with permaculture communities.

For those not familiar with permaculture I recommend looking it up. Here is a tiny introduction;

“Permaculture is an approach to designing human settlements and perennial agricultural systems that mimic the relationships found in the natural ecologies.”

Look around your neighbourhood for a community garden, if there isn't one take the initiative and start one up and invite your friends and neighbours to join you. By taking initiative in your community you will get connected to it and feel less isolated by our individualistic society. We need more community and spaces where we can connect. Disconnected people are disempowered, and the most important thing we need to do is empower ourselves by connecting and sharing our lives and experiences with others. There is power in numbers. We should do everything we can to live in collective houses, work on collective projects, and share our lives with others. The more people we develop positive relationships with the bigger our collective projects can become, and the more realistic it will be for us to realize our dreams. We don't need more junk. Consumerism is a force of destruction that is ravaging our earth. We must stop buying their garbage and stop working so much to pay for it. We really don't need even three quarters of the consumer products we spend money on. Our over-consumption leads to a ridiculous amount of trash, and a general feeling that everything is disposable. Instead of fixing the things we have, we throw them out and by new things. Most goods that get thrown out can be easily fixed, and there are people in our communities that know how to repair and refurbish these things.

So let's stop producing more shit and start fixing the stuff already out there. There are more than enough cars, TV's, furniture, clothes, and other products out there that we really don't need to produce anything new. We can learn to make due with what we've already got, and fix it as it breaks. Or we can just learn how to make our own things as we need them, and not be so dependent on industrialized society. The less we need to depend on experts and specialists for our necessities of life, the freer we'll be. We need to become the masters of our own existence. We need to learn alternative medicine, and replace pharmaceuticals with common herbal remedies that we can cultivate in our own bio-regions. We need our own wells and water-purification systems. We need our own sustainable sources of heat and energy, and we need to drastically reduce the amount of energy we consume as well. We need to develop our own forms of community-oriented justice and alternatives to jails and cops. We need to dismantle the military-industrial-complex, the military as an institution, and all weapons. We need to detoxify the earth. We need to create the world we want to live in. But we need to do these things soon.

The world is yours; save it or watch it die. The time is now; because tomorrow may be too late. Can we live without capitalism? Yes we can. Can we live without nation-states? Yes we can. Can we build a brighter future? Yes we can.

Editorial opinions or comments expressed in this online edition of Interrobang newspaper reflect the views of the writer and are not those of the Interrobang or the Fanshawe Student Union. The Interrobang is published weekly by the Fanshawe Student Union at 1001 Fanshawe College Blvd., P.O. Box 7005, London, Ontario, N5Y 5R6 and distributed through the Fanshawe College community. Letters to the editor are welcome. All letters are subject to editing and should be emailed. All letters must be accompanied by contact information. Letters can also be submitted online by clicking here.