I’d like to elaborate on a concept I overheard stated today at a very earthy, dare I say forward-thinking, place where I like to spend much of my time: humans aren’t smarter than nature. We like to think we are, really, we like to think we can create these crazy, convenient worlds and wrap ourselves into these weird bubbles that resemble less and less the place we’re actually inhabiting, while underneath it all the earth has been providing everything we need for us since the beginning of time. I’m not saying you should go take a walk and look at all the pretty trees, although I’m totally a fan of that approach, too. I’m saying you should eat something today that was in no way genetically altered in a lab to last five hundred times longer than it normally would. I’m saying throw your apple core in a compost bin instead of a plastic trash bag. I’m saying you should try liking something that was made from stuff you’ve heard of, or isn’t a dead pig’s five-year-old buttcheek that was injected with a gallon and a half of sodium nitrite. Maybe you should save a trillion dollars a year by turning on your tap instead of buying that weird bottled water stuff, because, news flash, water’s free.
Call me a hippie, but, to me, these things are just common sense. Sure we’ve discovered a lot of cool, useful things and built a lot of cool, useful things, but why are people viewing technology as synonymous to a desire to deny nature at all costs? Isn’t it entirely possible that we don’t need to use technology to suffocate our planet, but that we can use technology to work positively alongside it? Do you think if no one had invented boxed macaroni and cheese we’d all die of malnutrition? Quite the opposite, my friends. Quite the opposite.
I realize that all of these environmental issues are a lot more complicated than I’m making them out to be, but in a lot of ways they really are this simple. Shit the earth grew is good for you, bottom line. We’re animals, and just like cows graze on that lovely green stuff we call grass and live lovely, full, cowish lives, the earth produces a lot of awesome stuff that can keep us healthy, too.
In the last year I did a total overhaul on my lifestyle. I changed what I ate, my activity levels, what I put into my body, what I put onto my body. True story: I don’t get stomachaches anymore. I lost weight and I look super healthy. I have energy radiating from every strand of my hair, every pore of my skin. I pay attention to the world more now, I question everything instead of assuming that these big, invisible corporations know my name and have my best interests in mind. It’s not a political stance, either, and it has nothing to do with your view on capitalism or business or any of that. It has to do with us as humans - our health, our safety, and our future. We really do have control of our own bodies, though, and that’s something I really, firmly believe. I can’t tell you what to do with your body, but I can let you know how well the hippie approach has worked for me, and hope you catch onto a little bit of my earth-inspired happiness, too.
