Al even geleden :) / It's been a while :)

Het is al even geleden dat ik deze blog heb gebruikt. ;) Toch, ik ben van plan om ze terug meer te gebruiken. Ik ben gestart met het schrijven van nieuwsbrieven om mijn reizen en de projecten waar ik aan werk op te tekenen. Als je geïnteresseerd bent, laat het me weten en ik zet je op de mailinglist.

Een andere grote verandering dat vanaf nu zal gebeuren: Ik ga elke post die ik hier schrijf in 2 talen doen, Nederlands en Engels. Ik doe dit in mijn nieuwsbrieven zodat ik meer mensen kan bereiken en het lijkt een goede gewoonte te zijn om beter en beter te worden in mijn Engels. :) 


It's been a while since I've used this blog. ;) I'm planning to use it more again, though. I've started writing newsletters to record my travels and the projects I'm working on. If you're interested, let me know and I'll put you on the mailing list.

Another major change that will happen from now on: I'm going to write every post that I do here in 2 languages, Dutch and English. I do this in my newsletters so I can reach more people and it seems like a good habit to become better and better at my English. :)  

Ecology: Basic human needs as a basis for our society

A lot activism lately, so didn't have much time to write. It's snowing quite heavily today and the rooftops I can see from out of my window or turning into a beautiful white landscape. This night it's going to be really cold and I really hope that everybody has a warm place to stay the night. I've been working as a volunteer for about three months now in the shelter for the homeless. Sadly enough we can only give them a place for a maximum of five days. After that they have to go outside again for seven days before they can return in our shelter. An absurd rule in my opinion, because sometimes we even have empty beds because of this. Luckily the squatters opened a new squat a few days ago entirely for the homeless, so hopefully this will get them off the streets. It even got in the newspapers. Sadly enough at least one politician had to reply in a rather negative way. She even stated that there was no need for extra shelter...Apparently they are completely oblivious to the problems the homeless are facing. So yeah, I'm completely in favor of the new squat. Way to go guys!

It also got me thinking about our society and how it fails in giving everybody the basic human needs (oxygen, water, food, shelter, warmth and sleep). Why don't we have a society that is based on these needs instead of our economical system? It makes way more sense. Imagine a society where all of these needs are easily met. A utopia? Not really. The fact is that nature has been giving us all these things for free for thousands of years. It is only a small part of humanity that decided to put an economical system on top of this abundance. It is only a fraction of one species of millions of species on this planet that decided that we should work long and hard to earn ourselves a water, food, shelter, etc. None of the other species had a say in this matter, even most of our own species didn't have much say in it. Completely absurd...        

"But look at our ancestors. They had to work hard for everything and had a very hard life altogether." I hear you say. Well, do you think they had to work for eight hours a day to get all their food? Research says this would've been done in about two to three hours. 

"But they lived in very primitive conditions without any comfort! We have to work this hard to have the comfort we have now" Well, you're maybe right about the first part, but having to work hard to have the comfort we have now is an illusion. The reason why we have to work hard, is because we are doing all the work that nature did for us thousands of years ago or we're doing it in an absurd inefficient way. To give you a couple of hints:

Food: Instead of agriculture, permaculture is the way to go. Where agriculture is invasive, unecological and the farmer has to do all the work, with permaculture you work with nature and after a couple of years you pretty much have a food paradise.

Warmth: Instead of radiators, which are based on non-renewable fossil fuels, go for rocket stoves and rocket mass heaters. These types of wood-burning systems are way more efficient, ecological, comfortable and pretty. 

Shelter: Instead of using cement, concrete, bricks and a lot of wood, you can use cob, strawbales, adobe and other more ecological techniques. My favorite is cob, because you can pretty much sculpt your house.

There are a lot of other examples like this. The low-tech knowledge is also evolving, but is overshadowed by our tendencies to use high-tech. If we would choose to go primarily for low-tech solutions, in my opinion it's perfectly possible to create a society that has an abundance to meet every basic human need very easily and even for free. It is just a matter of applying this knowledge.