It was wonderful waking up to the sight of snow drifting down in button-sized composites of delicate flakes and frozen nodes just outside my window this morning. Couldn’t help staring for awhile at the soothing work nature was making of the increasingly whitening backdrop. An evolving canvas or tapestry affected by the forces of chaos applied to our most precious, life-dependent substance at lesser thermal energy levels than there were even just a week ago.

It got me thinking. Why do we live our lives as though snow is an inconvenience? What is it about our day to day lives, so removed from the natural order of things, that causes us to stress and fret once a good bit of snow gets dropped on us?

Sure, some of us love this season, sometimes specifically for the snow itself. But more than a few of us find all the added bulky layers that we’re required to wear to maintain our warmth outdoors to be obnoxiously cumbersome. Hazardous driving conditions also raise more than a few drivers’ blood pressures this time of year. Getting to and from work via delayed transit services plagued by traffic congestion adjusting for the influx of snow on the roads is also a sore point for many commuters. My personal pet peeve is arriving at my destination after a good long walk with snow caked on my coats that I can’t ever fully shake off, knowing it will melt while I’m preoccupied, and that I’ll likely be wearing damp layers for the return trip home.

Big deal.

No, there’s something strangely off about the fact that this is a recurring natural phenomenon that we seem to be so ill adjusted for. And, more often than not, our attitudes about it tend to suck as well. I don’t know what ought to be different, but perhaps this time of year would be much more enjoyable if there wasn’t so much stress over getting to and from work. Heck, what if taking a routine “snow day” off from work was encouraged, even here in Canada? [or especially because of being here in Canada. Why couldn’t it be a normal and even celebrated part of our culture?]

Just a thought. One might have nothing to do with the other, though I am inclined to believe that a more laissez-faire social work ethic and attitude is healthier for those doing the work. Makes me wonder if life in general would be improved in a similar way.

Don’t get me wrong, as it is, it’s good that we have regulations and standards and expectations. Work place safety practices in the last few decades, for example, have prevented an immense number of unnecessary workplace related injuries from occurring in the first place.

However good regulation (and however detrimental deregulation) may be for the way things are now, I am inclined to believe that a more preferable society is one that never needed regulating in the first place.

I’m thinking of society and culture less driven by consumerism and material possession. What would that change? Less demand for stuff and things = less production, less maintenance, less servicing = less resource extraction and less environmental destruction.

What would we be filling our time up with instead? What other pursuits would be shaping our values if not the accruement of wealth, power and material possession? Who knows, but I’m willing to bet that, whatever they are, they’ll be a lot more natural and spontaneous and a whole heck of a lot less dependent on the enforcement and coercion of top-down regulations.

But how can I possibly cry out against materialism and consumerism? Isn’t the roof over my head, which I did not construct, nor did I inherit from the efforts of family members in the past who did, a product of materialism itself? Granted, one created out of supposed necessity, but still… the materials had to be produced. To do so, they had to be source fed from natural resources. All kinds of them.

This is no surprise in and of itself, but in the name of sustainability, can every single member of the human population, divided up into some reasonable grouping number (three residents, in the case for where I live) per dwelling, be afforded the same kind of housing accommodations that I enjoy without bleeding the planet dry of one resource or another used in the making of this home? Or without leaving an irreversible, critical collective footprint on the planet, be it carbon, toxins, sheer physical presence, or other means?

If the answer is no, then I concede that I have what I have at the expense of others never being able to enjoy the same. And not even just others now, but more so for future generations.

There are many who live in far nicer homes. If my level of housing luxury is not sustainable for everyone to have, then all the more so for those who have it even better. But perhaps I am much higher up in the luxurity of housing arrangements than I imagine that I am, so maybe there is far more onus on me to make changes before expecting to see it happen elsewhere first. Something for me to think about.

Or what about my laptop? Spent ~$400 to buy it, which was all of my banked vacation payout plus most of a paycheck two summers ago. Without it, and computers I’ve owned before it, I wouldn’t have met my girlfriend. I wouldn’t have a youtube channel. I wouldn’t have a way to find out about things mainstream news outlets don’t like to report about. I wouldn’t have ready access to excellent wallpapers on demand (mainly Earthporn, though that’s probably what real life is for, in more ways than one).

How much of my laptop was made from recycled parts? The tv in the living room that I’m sitting in, what about it? The coffee table, the sofa and arm chair, my guitar, all the dvds and video games, all of it. The fact that, collectively, my roommates and I own all of that which we do doesn’t seem like any big deal. It seems normal, heck perhaps even sub-par by the standards of more than a few neighbours we cross paths with from time to time.

But the vast majority of all that we have came to be through material manufacturing plants and factories, and the majority of the materials they used to do so came from virgin natural resources. So, to do the maths, if everyone on the planet owned the same amount of the same things as I do… we’d be screwed.

I hope I’m wrong about those last two statements, but I doubt that I am.

In a way, I should be morbidly grateful for the obscenely poor in the most under-developed, high population countries of the world. But that strikes me as an awful thing to be thankful for, innit? Others suffering and held down so that I might enjoy my level of comforts? That’s wrong on so many levels.

I want to experience more than just guilt. Guilt is a terrible, toxic, and more importantly, a wasted emotion. Guilt helps to change little or nothing. Guilt might lead to obligation, and obligation easily leads to resentment. I want to experience a genuine change of heart. I want to awaken to the belief that it is more desirable to live in a home that causes virtually no more harm to the environment than a bird’s nest or bee’s hive does (at best), or a beaver’s dam does (at worst).

There are Earthships, Hobbit/low-impact woodland homes, and then there’s these guys here I’m curious about now too:

http://sourceable.net/eco-friendly-homes-amongst-trees/
[Images no longer visible at this link, but are visible here:
https://mymodernmet.com/konrad-wojcik-primeval-symbiosis-single-pole-house/%5D

I want to fall right in love with something like this. More importantly, I want to believe that it wouldn’t just be some half baked fantasy. I want to believe that there’s a real opportunity to change what I’m doing, how I’m living, going from the environmental impact I’m currently making to one that might actually give back for once. I want to feel proud of the way I live.