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How to Eat Responsibly

Wendell Berry, one of the great voices of American sustainability, agriculture, food and culture has this advice on how to eat responsibly. The following can be found in his essay, “The Pleasures of Eating” where he also writes famously that “eating is an agricultural act.”

Indeed it is. So, then how do we eat responsibly?

Participate in food production to the extent that you can. If you have a yard or even just a porch box or a pot in a sunny window, grow something to eat in it. Make a little compost of your kitchen scraps and use it for fertilizer, Only by growing some food for yourself can you become acquainted with the beautiful energy cycle that revolves from soil to seed to flower to fruit to food to offal to decay, and around again. You will he fully responsible for any food that you grow for yourself, and you will know all about it. You will appreciate it fully, having known it all its life.
Prepare your own food. This means reviving in your own mind and life the arts of kitchen and household. This should enable you to eat more cheaply, and it will give you a measure of “quality control”: you will have some reliable knowledge of what has been added to the food you eat.
Learn the origins of the food you buy, and buy the food that is produced closest to your home. The idea that every locality should be, as much as possible, the source of its own food makes several kinds of sense. The locally produced food supply is the most secure, the freshest, and the easiest for local consumers to know about and to influence,
Whenever possible, deal directly with a local farmer, gardener, or orchardist. All the reasons listed for the previous suggestion apply here. In addition, by such dealing you eliminate the whole pack of merchants, transporters, processors, packagers. and advertisers who thrive at the expense of both producers and consumers.
Learn, in self-defense, as much as you can of the economy and technology of industrial food production. What is added to food that is not food, and what do you pay for these additions?
Learn what is involved in the best farming and gardening.
Learn as much as you can, by direct observation and experience if possible, of the life histories of the food species.

I find Berry’s writings and ideas to be for the most part beautiful. His thoughts on food and the merits of local, sustainable agriculture rings true with me. And while to follow these suggestions is a challenge in our convenience obsessed society, making the effort is well worth the price of participation.

The WSJ Talks Yoga Mats

The Wall Street Journal reviews the latest yoga mats in a recent post at their site.

This coverage is interesting and is yet another indicator as to the ever growing popularity of yoga across a rapidly expanding segment of the U.S. population. In fact, the yoga industry may just be one of the next big boom industries as more and more people seek wholeness or completeness in their ever more fragmented lives.

What’s at the core of this expansion is highly debatable ( I think people find a great deal more than exercise in their practice, but may not be able to articulate it or wish to admit it ) and could be its own post entirely, but what is clear is that the yoga gear industry continues to grow by leaps and bounds.

In fact, according to the WJS,

Manufacturers are unveiling the new mats at a time when the market for yoga equipment is growing. According to a 2008 survey by Yoga Journal, Americans spend $5.7 billion a year on yoga classes and products, an 87% increase from 2004.

Since I’m in the market for a new mat, I found this article interesting, if not helpful as I try and wade through the overwhelming choices. I don’t want bad mat karma and have found choosing to be a bit difficult. Do I go Manduka? Or, is Jade the way to go? I like Jade’s advertising campaign a lot, so who knows? And then there are the Eco considerations and PVC concerns.

Bottom line, I just want a mat that doesn’t slip, doesn’t slide and that is practical for my Ashtanga practice.

The World As We Are

There’s a thought in the introductory essay of Eknath Easwaran’s translation of The Dhammapada, which is his commentary on the book, that we see the world not as it is, but rather as we are.

We impose a range of biases and past experiences on our present and future actions. Even with regard to our interactions with people, we don’t see others as they see themselves, but as we see them. Therefore, we experience each other and the world in very selfish ways and how the world is perceived will be different based on the mind and ego of the experiencer.

He retells a story that is relevant for today when he writes of two men who go to foreign lands to experience and report back what they find. One found the people basically good at heart and generous. The other, a bit jealous, found that the people he experienced were selfish, scheming and cruel. In turned out that both we describing the same land.

As Easwaran writes, ‘”We see as we are,’ and our foreign policy follows what we see.” When I apply this idea to my country, the whole concept becomes very troubling.

The ultimate idea here is that if we change ourselves, we change the world around us, even if in subtle ways. Because all change, like revolution, starts within. And true revolution, like true change, is about the heart of the individual.

Or, as Robert Anton Wilson always said, “What the thinker thinks, the prover proves.”

There Has To Be More To It Than This, Right?

So, is this culture?

There must be more to it, right? Or is consumption all we have left? It sure seems that way to me. Of course, I’m on the inside looking at this problem because I help build brands. Yet I don’t think it’s the marketing that’s the problem. It’s the unchecked consumption. I just read a book that shared some shocking insights regarding consumer tendencies.

For example, did you know that the Self-Storage business has become a $17 billion annual industry? That’s larger that the motion picture business. Which means that in a nation of couch potatoes, the only thing we like more than movies is hoarding stuff like little symbol using squirrels.

Or, here’s something else: We spend more on trash bags than ninety other countries spend on everything. (Via A Whole New Mind by Daniel Pink. Pink was citing a March, 2003 Polly LaBarre article from Fast Company magazine.)

So we buy and buy and store and store and when we can’t store stuff, we throw stuff away, lots of it, which creates more room to buy even more stuff.

What is that all about?