I'm not Dead (or look, I can totally do it when no one is looking)

Well it's been a while, hasn't it? Apologies, I've been in a funky place the last month or so. I've been finding it hard to spread myself to cover even my basic needs since I started at my new job. Oh yeah, I'm employed now. Woohoo!

Despite my sometimes negative feelings about my job, I am grateful that in these hard times I have finally found somewhere that actually wants me. Plus... I have an interview this coming Friday for a similar position (basically a lab technician role) but at a university, rather than sixth form college like my current job. I've got fingers, toes, eyes and everything else crossed that I get the university job. The pay is much better and it'll look better on my CV than working in a school environment, more industrial.

Also, I've taken my first steps towards self-sufficiency and homesteading (in a way). A week ago today I planted a few seeds (lettuce, beetroot, tomato and spring onions) in milk cartons in my kitchen window to see if I could get anything to grow. Turns out I can, sort of. Check out my lettuces and single beetroot seedling:

Beetroot

Lettuce

I think I'm going to have to thin out the lettuce soon, though I'm not exactly sure when or how so I'll be looking that up later today. Any advice is welcome.

So that's a quick update to say I'm not dead and I am in fact moving forward in life, albeit extremely slowly. Maybe that's the best I can hope for at the moment. I may fail at basic housekeeping, or doing anything beyond going to work, coming home and checking on the plants, but I am now working and I have taken the first steps to some degree of food independence. Those are exciting things to be celebrated. Those are two fewer problems than I had a month ago. For all my wallowing in depression when I am too tired to do anything much when I get home, I have achieved two very important steps and I must recognise that.

Hope you are all well and sticking to any resolutions or plans you made for yourself, even if, like me, they are taking a slightly different shape than you had intended originally.

Flexing Our Muscles (or making myself and the world a better place through developing will power)

Here’s a story I’m sure everyone’s familiar with:

For as long as I can remember, I have always made big, bold, ‘whole new me’ type resolutions at New Years. Well this year I say: ‘Bugger it! It’s clearly not been working.’ Every year I sit down, write out detailed plans for what exercise or studying or such I will do on each day, usually with some kind of daily routine involving meditating, drinking green tea, waking up early, reading, writing and other such things I’m certain all the amazing, well-balanced, productive people do each day. I’ll be able to stick to the plan, at least the important bits (fitness/studying) for a few days, maybe a week. One time I even stuck to the exercise for a month! But then I falter. Miss a day here or there. Then eventually back to square one.

I find it especially hard to stick to resolutions and ‘whole new me’ type plans because I am something of a perfectionist when it comes to things I’m really enthusiastic about. Which naturally leads to much frustration when I miss a day, or something doesn’t go smoothly in the plan. I huff and puff because I’ll never be one of those amazing green tea drinking, early-rising, productivity gods. And then I do nothing.

That sort of perfectionism has been a real road block for me. It’s ridiculous. Obviously logically doing even a little exercise or studying here and there is better than doing none. I know that, but I’m an idiot and like to huff and puff. I’ve had enough of that sort of bullshit.

Firstly, who the hell are these green tea-drinking, early-rising bastards anyway? No one I know. Not a clue where that idea snuck into my head from. Probably TV. Normal people aren’t like that, so that concept is getting chucked in the bin right away.*

This year my aim is to make a little progress every day. To just take one small step towards improving things for myself and others. There are so many, many, many articles out there about how it takes thirty days to make a habit, and how we should focus on one small thing at a time.  By making use of the advice and experiences of others, I hope I can make some small changes. 

 I’m going to focus on one main goal a month. For January it’s my eating and exercise. I have a plan, which isn’t especially intensive but I’ve read some good testimonials, and some pretty decent science backing up the health benefits, so it’ll do for now. There are several other areas in my life I would like to improve on, and while I will be making small efforts with them as and when the mood takes me, I’m going to put all my willpower towards eating and fitness so I don’t spread it too thinly. For those of you interested I am going to be following, a few (readily forgiven) slip ups aside, the primal blueprint.

Other goals for the year include:

·         Really focusing on getting well.  

·         Writing here more regularly, particularly to include in-depth essays on topics of interest.

·         Writing my novel.

·         Quitting smoking completely

·         Become an early riser

·         Reading regularly (on which I’ve already made a great start

·         Start an investment account. 

·         Cutting back on expenses and putting the ‘excess’ toward charity.

·         Learning to play the guitar I’ve owned for a few years now.

·         Get involved with volunteer activities, particularly in my local community (I’m starting with St John’s Ambulance in February, woohoo)

·         And others that I will undoubtedly be adding, since I have twelve months which will need filling.

The whole idea behind introducing only one major change at a time and aiming to just work on it a little bit extra each day is to help me build up my will power. Will power being a vital tool to getting anywhere in life, I feel . While I am able to take a long-term view on life, and in most situations can, making changes to myself is the one area where I always am short-sighted. It’s always a radical ‘whole new me’ change, or nothing. 

Now I realise that sounds like far too many things to hope for, but they always say shoot for the moon and things like that, so I'm going to. The self-forgiveness of Tuesday's post (which is still masquerading as December 24th for some reason) comes in here. If I try to do all these things this year and only achieve half, I'll be happy. 

So here's to 2012. Please come along with me on the journey. For the most part I'll be writing here about issues I feel are important, but from time to time I'll slip in an update on my progress. Let's hope we can make a real difference this year. 

*If you are one of these people please get in touch so i can interrogate you to uncover your secrets. 

Putting Oneself First (or taking care of yourself before trying to take care of others)

There is a great conflict in my mind over putting my needs before those of other people (where the other people are actually in need, not just in the queue for the toilet or something). For the longest time I’ve struggled to reconcile the idea that a person needs to take care of themselves before they will be fit to take care of others. In the past I’ve tried to fight this notion, or rather truth. Consequently I agreed to be a part of organisations and take on roles that were beyond my capacity, in that I didn’t really have the energy or time to dedicate to them but blundered on forward convincing myself I would be OK giving a little more time here and there. They just wound up eating into my sorely needed down time. In the end, I was more of a hindrance to these groups than a help, but I always told myself I would definitely be OK doing these things because they were for other people and not for me.

As things currently stand, because I didn’t give myself enough time to get well and didn’t acknowledge my limitations, I graduated from university with a degree class far below what I should have obtained. Now that degree is quite a big obstacle to my ultimate dream of becoming a doctor, rather than the boost it should have been. Despite recognising that I direly need to get myself sorted out and do absolutely everything I can to overcome and (as much as is possible) control my depression, I am refusing to stop trying to move forward. In less than two weeks I will be sending off applications to various universities to study to become a paramedic. Classes wouldn’t start until September, so I’ve nine months to make some good progress with my state of mind, and I shall be talking with admissions officers to determine if I can defer a year should I not feel ready when September rolls around.

Even to me, this seems like it is probably a little mad, but I think the fail-safe of having another year to take off to get well justifies the decision. The thing is, I simply cannot stand the idea of stagnating. Of course recovering from illness is not standing still, but it is just so hard to convince myself to focus solely on that when in my day to day activities such as going to the supermarket, taking care of household stuff aren’t too badly affected. I feel like I ought to be out there making myself useful to others right now. Like I ought to be moving towards my aim of helping people in emergencies and taking care of others.

Part of why I feel the need to study and help people professionally is that I know there are so many places around the world where people need help. It irks me to know I live so comfortably while so many go without basic requirements and medical care. Sure I can donate a little money to various charities, but I so desperately want to give time and my (future) skills to those who need them. I know that unless I can get myself to a place where I can function well enough to become competent in my chosen field, I am useless to these people. This is why it is important to put oneself first. *

Yesterday I said today would be an outline of my grand master plan for 2012. Obviously this isn't it, but I felt it was necessary to talk about this first, because, considering that this is a blog** about ethics, humanity and making the world a better place, my grand master plan for the year might seem a little self-centred without context. Of course it’s entirely possible I’m just paranoid because I have this concept that my life will be without value if I am not in service to others and felt the need to justify having plans for the year that include learning to play the guitar.

*Even parents, who are their children’s life line and support, need to take some time off occasionally to recuperate. Luckily we invented babysitters.

 **Blogger's spellcheck was trying to convince me that 'blog' is not a real thing. Never have I known a website to be self-loathing. 

Does God Matter? (or would we live our lives differently knowing an undebatabely true answer?)

I typed this post up a week ago and lost it on my computer. I realised* half hour ago that it wasn't saved on my computer but to Google Docs. Duuuuuuhhhh.

*yes with an 's' - stupid Google stop trying to make me spell like an american!

God. What is He doing? Is He a He? Is He even real? What is the grand plan? Is there one? Does it matter?



...Does it matter?



I don’t think so. Not one tiny bit.



For pretty much as long as I can remember God and I have had a strange relationship. We don’t really write or call each other. Sometimes we poke each other to see what happens.



When I was really young, I think maybe five or six years old I made a really strange request of God, to test whether or not he was there. Now I know you aren’t meant to test God, but I was 5... or six... and didn’t know any better. You’re all going to laugh when you read this, and I’ve never shared it before so be kind :P



Tiny little five or six year old Brett, all tucked up in bed one night, wondered if God was real. And if he was real, did he listen? Did he grant requests? Would he listen to me? So I put my hands together, closed my eyes and prayed.



I asked God, to give me a sign that he was there and that he was involved in the world. Tiny little five or six year old Brett, all tucked up in bed, hands together praying, asked God to make it so that if he touched the colour orange, said the word orange, ate an orange, that he would need to shit.



Don’t ask me why. Of all the possible signs a person could ask for, my strange five or six year old brain asked to be tortured by the colour orange. And it worked.



For what seems like it was weeks, maybe months after that. If I touched orange, ate oranges, said the word orange, I would very shortly after need to run to the bathroom. So it seemed, God listened. I spent a long time avoiding orange in all it’s forms. Though I think after a while I prayed for God to take 
it away. And it stopped, though I was still wary of orange.



So for a while as a kid I was pretty certain God was around and paying attention and oddly indulgent of a chilld’s silly wishes. As I grew, I became extremely agnostic however, and these days I would chalk up that experience to being self-induced. I’ve spent many hours contemplating the divine. What form it might take. It’s name. How many gods there might be. Which religion might be right.

These days I would describe myself as a devout agnostic.* I want to believe very very much. Sometimes I feel there is definitely something out there watching over us, whether actively taking care or not. Other times I feel staunchly that there is nothing there and that the world is a construct of maths and science.



I am a scientist. I have a degree in biomedical sciences and I believe in evolution and the big bang. I believe the entire world can be explained mathematically. That doesn’t mean I discount the possibility of the existance of a deity, obviously, hence the whole agnostic thing. 

Whether God exists or not is not going to change my basic operating patterns. I'm going to live my life the same way either way, I'll still be a good person and do my best for all around me. If God is watching, hopefully that'll be enough to get me into heaven/nirvana/elysium.


I could spend hours writing and discussing the arguments for or against the existance of God. But why bother? What would be the point?



If God exists, then there’s a grand plan right?** And if there’s a grand plan we’re all doing exactly what we need to be doing. And if not, then who cares? Whatever the hell we decide to do is fine. To paraphrase Robin Ince in his TED: if there’s no God, we all get to decide what the point of our lives is. So we follow the grand plan and our lives are meaningful, or we do what we like to make our lives meaningful. Either way we’re all cool. Sweet.





*Don’t argue. I get to choose what I call myself.

**Which would link in nicely to my thoughts on free will vs determinism, but that's too much for this post.


Definitely want to hear what people think on this one. Let me know :)

Preparing for Spring (or collecting plastic bottles and dirt for my nefarious purposes)

A few days ago I started watching TED talks obsessively. For those not familiar, TED organises conferences around the work discussing different themes and has some amazing speakers come and talk about their work, prospects for the future, life, poetry, science, EVERYTHING! They are amazing. I'd known they existed for a couple of years but never watched any, until the other day. And now I'm hooked. It's my new morning routine. Breakfast or a cup of tea and a TED talk. It's a great way to start the day as they generally leave me feeling inspired and revved up to take on the world.

By far one of my favourite talks was given by Britta Reilly of RNDIY.org. It concerned the development of systems for growing vegetables and plants in small indoor spaces, particularly flats and studio apartments. I would absolutely recommend anyone check it out, even those of you with your own out door spaces to grow, just for the pure joy of seeing the inspirational and innovational approaches being developed as a collaboration of everyday people across the world who live in cities but want to grow their own food.

This is basically an arrangement of plastic bottles with good soil in them being used to grow things. A pump system is used to get water to flow through the soil and provide nutrients. As more people are collaborating and sharing their designs (which is what has really driven the development of this project and allowed for enhancements in energy requirements and carbon outputs etc) the systems get sleeker and better and could really make an impact.

So this is my challenge for 2012 though it starts now: collect as many plastic bottles as possible (without giving money to bottled water companies on account of they're stupid), start a small compost pile somewhere, decide what to grow, collect materials to construct the frame and build the thing!

What an exciting way to take my first steps into homesteading. If I can achieve any measure of success with this, I will be over the moon and able to integrate growing my own food with some of the plans I have for the next decade or so of my life before I have my own land.

Thoughts, comments and concerns welcomed as ever. I'm really keen to hear what people think about this. I'm sure there's some aspect I'm overlooking.

Here, Have My Job (or how my not being employed will benefit the world)

Just a quick post today to share a point I read on Early Retirement Extreme, a blog about gaining financial independence. Part of what worried me about the idea of homesteading was the thought that I'd not be contributing to society. A point was made on ERE that, especially at the moment, with unemployment so high, removing one's self from the work force actually reduces competition for jobs, so in that sense it's good. This really helped resolve my issue, because I realise I can still be a valuable and productive member of society even if not employed. I can run my own business, volunteer, develop some useful hobbies, focus on the homestead. By not being formally employed, I'd be giving my job to someone else. If I was then running my own business, I could maybe even employ someone else. That's two extra people employed than before!

My gift to someone else.

Also I want to say thank you to all the new readers and followers. Actually I'd like to thank the older ones too.I didn't realise until I had a flick through this blogs stats the other day but there have actually been quite a few folks coming by, including in the first month a lot from Romania and now from Russia apparently. Interesting and hello. Special thanks to Stephen and Phelan for sending people this way.

Green Energy (or how much should we sacrifice for the sake of our values?)

The dilemma: how much should we sacrifice, or ask others to sacrifice for our values? Particularly if the others have different values than our own?

I've been struggling with a decision recently. Not a massive one, but given my current situation a fairly important one. The decision? Whether or not to sign up for green electricity, given the increased cost.

The reason I've struggled with this is that I'm currently unemployed, again, and thanks to stupid depression, that's not likely to change in the near future. The budget is tight, and I'm not the best at sticking with one at the best of times.

While I'm living on minimal income, I've been constantly wavering between going for the cheapest option to make life easier for myself, and picking the slightly more costly option that is commensurate with my values. For several weeks I've gone back and forth depending on my mood and outlook, but finally a couple days ago I settled on doing what I feel is the right thing.

Deciding to go for a green energy scheme, I signed up for Equigas from Ebico and electricity from Good Energy, a 100% renewable energy company.

Now, there were other companies, notably nPower, who also provided certified green energy schemes that would match my electricity usage with 100% renewables and cost a fifth less than Good Energy. So why Good Energy?

nPower are primarily using non-renewable sources for electricity and just topping up with renewable to match my demand.

Good Energy use 100% renewable energy sources and have smaller generators spread throughout the country in hundreds of different areas. Local generators support communities and provide jobs across the country. In addition, Good Energy's hydroelectric power comes from small watermills as opposed to damns which have a questionable environmental impact.

For me, I like the idea of supporting a company that is dedicated to developing green electricity usage and local projects and exclusively uses renewable sources. To paraphrase from their (obviously biased but still valid) literature: it's more like buying from a farmers' market than a supermarket.

As for gas, this is a tough one and still not quite resolved.

I signed up the other day for (non-profit energy provider) Ebico's Equigas. This provides gas at a low flat rate regardless of payment method or usage, which for me as someone using a prepay meter and little gas compared to the national average is very attractive, plus it has a positive social impact by providing more affordable gas. The downside is that there is no mention of the source of the gas on their website, nor of any projects to increase renewable gas production.

Enter Ecotricity. They produce a large volume of their gas from waste products and are developing technology to produce it en masse from natural algae. The downside is the cost is 1.5 times that of Ebico for the amount of gas I would use. Spread over the course of the year that's not the end of the world, and the sums involved wouldn't typically be seen as wallet-busting. However as someone who is striving for financial independence in the long run but who's values drive him to lean towards Ecotricity for it's renewable gas projects, the conflict of ideals is challenging.

My mind is still changeable though. While I am inclined to pick Ecotricity, I am waiting on Equigas to get in touch with me regarding the exact sources of their gas. That will be the clincher either way.

One day I'll be off grid and all this will be a thing of the past. But until then I am struggling to balance my responsibility to the Earth and society, with my responsibility for helping ensure that WIB and I can afford to live while we try to get stable.

Any thoughts, comments and opinions are more than welcome.

Ethics of Homesteading (or will the world fall into chaos if I grow my own food?)

WARNING: LACK OF COHESION AHEAD. THIS POST MAY CAUSE HEADACHES AND DIZZINESS.

I would just like to point out that I am fully intending to homestead one day and the point of this post is to explore the ethics behind my decision. I am not ragging on homesteading. :)

I’m big on society. Splitting all our essential tasks up and divvying them out between us so that each task is performed by specialists such as farmers, power companies, builders, engineers etc. has allowed humanity to develop into the flourishing, creative and high achieving species that we are today. The formation of societies wherein individuals work together for more than just protection has freed up the time of many to perform non-essential tasks. I guess I should clarify what I mean by essential and non-essential.

Essential tasks are those which cater for our most basic needs. I’m sure most people know what their basic needs for existence are but I’m going to use Maslow’s Heirarchy of Needs to illustrate my point:



So according to Maslow, our basic needs are: food, air, drink, shelter, warmth, sleep and sex. While I guess sex is an important biological need, it’s not vital to individual survival so I’m going to ignore it for now. (Although I guess societies have a specialised group of people to cater to that need too).

Straight away it’s easy to see how societies have people to cater for our basic needs. Though initially I was a bit uncertain of how society provides air, I think it’s fair to say that government pollution regulations are now providing that in a sense. Catering for our basic biological needs doesn’t require the whole of the population which frees up plenty of people to fulfil our higher needs, from safety through to self-actualisation. And that’s what makes society so friggin’ awesome.
My issue with homesteading stems from the idea of removing one’s self from society. While I believe people should be able to ‘opt out’ of society, would it be right to do so?

Now I know that many homesteading families have at least one member still in employment and so are still contributing to society in that fashion. However, I question the effect of their reduced economic input. Spending less money on food, which is often a reasonably significant portion of their expenses, means less cash flow. How negative is the impact this would have? Probably not very at all.
But what if a large number of the population decided to homestead? Perhaps the cash flow would simply shift; rather than going to supermarkets and corporations it would move through local markets and farmers, growers and breeders. But it would never be as much as if all food were to be purchased through the supermarkets, due to the nature of homesteading, i.e., seed-saving and breeding your live stock to replenish those slaughtered.

Of course the reality is that only a tiny fraction of the population homesteads, or has the desire to, so the overall economic impact is tiny. Even if there were vast numbers of people looking to homestead, there’s a natural limit due to land availability. Although there is more than enough land for every family to own an acre in the UK, and a few acres in the US, not all of that land is farmable. Even if it were that would deprive us of the space and man power needed to sustain society as we know it, full of the luxuries and benefits that we enjoy and are hardly likely to give up.

Thankfully that’s not going to happen.


So what was the point of this post? Well, it is an introduction to the big-picture impact of homesteading. In coming articles I am going to address aspects of homesteading that include: a more detailed look at economics, energy, responsibility to the less fortunate, responsibility to society, and society’s responsibility to homesteaders.

I apologise for the weird flow and lack of focus in this post, I’ll probably write a more coherent revised version in the future, but for now this will do.

Howdy, Stranger (or good lord it's been a while since I posted, luckily no one is around to notice)

Feel free to skip this post, it's just one of those 'oh god sorry I haven't written' posts, which are stupid and I ought to have known better!

Well hello there. Long time. Come in, have a cup of tea and a biscuit. We should catch up.

OK, here's the breakdown of my life recently:
- look for jobs
- find job charity fundraising on the streets for what would be reasonable pay except that the travel is unpaid and takes up between 3-5 hours each day
- receive miracle phone call from employment agency giving me a few weeks on placement as a science technician in a school
- receive invitations to interview for positions as healthcare assistant in hospital operatingwards (amazingly exciting and appropriate for my life) and also for research technician at university (not as exciting and useful as healthcare assistant job, but would be enjoyable enough and pays 5k extra)
- Oh, also receive interview for job at McDonald's. Begrudgingly accept interview invitation because I will secretly enjoy being a part of the cause of the global health crisis that is OBESITY! Dun dun dun.

Right anyway, so that's that. I apologise to you and to myself for not working harder to stick to the schedule I had set out for myself and to write the posts I actually want to. Life is a lot more settled now, so I'm going to spend the rest of this evening actually doing some writing. Next post soon!

Societies Are Alive (or beginning the discussion of the responsibilities of individuals to society)

Sometimes I think that societies are alive. They grow, they respond and adapt, they consume and, in a fashion, they reproduce. As for people, we are societies’* cells and messengers. Their basic components.

Being human means being a part of something larger than yourself, whether you like it or not. Individuals, while invaluable in and of themselves, are also vital pieces of the greater organism that is society, which is constantly shedding and replacing them concerned with the welfare of the whole. Humans are born into situations that they may not choose for themselves, and have to make the best with whatever their lot in life is. The big question is: how to make the best of your life?

Many believe that we are here to serve a divine purpose, and that whatever hardships we endure in this life are to teach us lessons that will nourish our souls and prepare us for the hereafter. Others believe that this life is all we have and that the circumstances we are born into are random and meaningless and as such we ought to be ruthless in acquiring the best of everything for ourselves and in the pursuit of happiness in this life.** Personally I am uncertain, but have come to a conclusion that will hopefully enable me to make the best of my life, which I will explain in another post.

The aim of Basic Humanity is to document my journey toward building a life that balances my own needs with my sense of social responsibility. It will explore why I've decided to build towards a life homesteading and my experiences with that, Hopefully it will also foster discussion about the responsibilities, if any, of individuals to society and the human race as a whole, as well as the extent of the freedom individuals should have to live as they please. Interspersed among that will be pieces about my own life experience and plans, particularly in relation to social responsibility, wherein I will dissect my views on matters including: living consciously, frugality, consumerism, capitalism vs socialism, religion, economics, politics, mental illness, self-sufficiency, environmentalism and homesteading and it’s place in modern society.

There’s an incredible amount to talk about and I’m keen to get a discussion going. Right now, I’m excited to get typing and explore the essence of basic humanity.


* Societys’/societies’? I agonised over that for ages. General consensus after a quick google search was “societies’”, but I’m not convinced.

** That is not to paint all the religious as selfless and giving, nor all atheists as cold and selfish. Obviously there is a mixed bag of people in both categories.