Natural Living and Techonolgy - Can they coexist?

[Justin D.]

So I am someone who at the moment is establishing a completely natural lifestyle. It is somewhat of a slow process because I am also working to sustain myself while changing, I have much to learn, to put into practice and improve. But from my understanding as it is, I do not see how it would be possible to have technology (of the more advanced kind, not levers etc) and respect nature at the same time.

Just think of all that is required for us to be sitting here on our computers communicating like this. Our complete infrastructure, in all its destructive glory, is required for us to be doing this. Yes we could have laptops with solar panels and etc etc. But who is going to make the solar panels when the old ones wear out? Who is going to mine the resources, process them, manufacture them and then transport it to you? And that applies everything you can power with electricity.

Anyone have any thoughts?

Anything is possible so I am not saying I am certain of this, just saying I cannot see how it would work.

[h0bby1]

well all the technolgy we used is based on more or less 200 year of research in really various domain, like semiconductors, plastics, electricity etc but it didn't appear like this all the concept in one row, it really came out little by little etc and its clear there other way to achieve the goal computers does today,well the actual form need electricity, there are various way to create electricity and not all the time hard to make, like dynamo, hydroelectrics, anything moving can be tranformed to electricity and its only form of energy, with now optical fiber with light, or their are researching things with quantic things to make long run communication, but i think lots of it has to rethougth relativly deeply to be really ok in our view, because it has been developped in the same time than industry and economy the way it is today

[xoxos]

ownership of land is slavery. people need to live on land, and if you're charging rent, they need to pay it to live. therefore humans are implicated.

behaviour and methodology are different under different paradigms - i know this may be *hard* to believe if you're young and haven't had much experience in business..

..say you make cars. in a privatised paradigm, you need to pay your rent.

say you make your car and you've got all the machines and dies set up, and right before the first car is ready to roll off the line you realise that you could improve the design.

but your rent is due yesterday so you need to sell cars now.. you ignore the optimal conditions and go with the current plan.

then you've got competitors so you have to make your product recognisable.. you have to be careful how you improve it or people might not feel comfortable if it's something they don't know.. regardless of practicality, if it's a significantly different shape, in a commercial venue, people are concerned that *they* may not be recognised.. no one wants a 2009 camaro that goes superfast and drives well if it looks like a frisbee.. they want the camaro shape, so people will say "look, they've got a camaro."

i dare to believe that technology and industrial manufacture can exist more conscionably. perhaps even mineral mining is possible without being so destructive. it would probably have a lower yield.. we'd have to make do with less...

i've often been told that 1974 was the year they started selling cars that are supposed to fall apart.

i generally find that there is a path forward if you look for it carefully.

[h0bby1]

but well one thing that really strike me on today electronics and computer, well i don't know if already looked inside your computer. what there is the ventirad, the thing to cool you cpu. the heat is what really take lot of energy in a cpu work. why is there heat , its a ratio with the size of the circuit and elecricity resistance. a higher resistance insert slow down in elecritricy moving. in audio its called impedence of a circuit. and then to get the cpu go faster and having more cycle/per sec, they need circuit with lower resistance and as they still want to push speed over and over and that the manufacturing has limits with the size of the engraving of the circuit ( it done wit laser and really few site can be used because of sismic and ground virbration its on mercure things etc because it really need to be precise with teh laser engraving of the circuit etc) and its all becase they want to push th e speed over and over and don't really care about energy consumtion of the thing its amazing the way they create heat because they put to much energy and to hight frequency for that the circuit could handle without heating , and when you see how software is built today , but it start with OS maker and other software make they don't care either about cycle consomation and optimisation so it loop in lots of energy consomation in heating and really hight degree of technics to get to modern cpu like modern pentium or ppc like clock cycle around 3ghz and all the supah fast thing, and supah liltte, and really cheap and throwable every 3 year or so well its this way of making the thing that correlate with buisness and economics and the market economy offer/demands and its only based with this but by shifting priorities in the whole process of creation from the roots to the final packaging it could really be different.

now with all the mobile fashion and the cheap hoster they tend to want to decrease the consomation of cpus and things like the via 2ghz cpu that do not need a ventirad at all and consume really less power and there are some effort put in those but consumation is still not the top priority of technology builder from the root

[leila]

i think if we redesigned and retrofit technology we could make it not so harmful and could fit into a natural lifestyle. i've lived without technology, electricity and all sorts of things...and i really did miss things like internet and movies and listening to music. i think its possible to make systems that allow us to have our cake and eat it too.
i have been thinking lately that if the basic priorities were chnaged in the designs of things than they wouldnt be so harmful. well specifically i was thinking about cars. if the priority was to make it extremely fuel efficient and to work off a source other than gas, number one priority, number 2 for me would be that it also served as a temporary small living shelter with basic supplies and kitchen, and then at the bottom of the list were things like speed and power and looks, that would be a great mobile. well to me i think it would be ideal.just inch along at 35 miles an hour top speed but completely gas free and a little moving flat till you got to somewhere else and an emergency med kit, and kitchen. hmm that sounds right to me. but cars have got to go like 130 miles an hour or something, who would ever go 130 miles an hour ( i drive like i'm an old person!) and then i was thinking how this idea applies to alot of things, peoples priorities and the goal is to make everything fast fast and huge huge and powerful powerful, not neccesarily to make it completely efficient and energy saving.
and yeah this idea kept going even to peoples thoughts processes, images, ways of living.
slow and steady wind the race huh?
and us using our computers is not the crux of the problem, not even a tiny percent? like certain things could be that may have limited harmful effects, but if kept in check and without too much else thrown on top of that it wouldnt matter as much. hmmm maybe that doesnt sound right? if say people werent throwing away compputer after after computer instead of fixing them or recycling them, if they were being made to last instead of being made to be lightweight and easily broken, things like that it wouldnt be as bad. if there wasnt a ton of other pollution from industries other than that.
hmm i dont know maybe i am wrong and i just really like my computer!

i think it's possible probable even that as technology advances we will come up with better ways, and start to take these sorts of things into consideration, that of having priorities that allowed us to have certain things, but not too excessive and not with emphasis on speed and power, but on sustainablity. course i may be optimistic, but i think things are really just about to get a lot better here.

[Justin D.]

ownership of land is slavery. people need to live on land, and if you're charging rent, they need to pay it to live. therefore humans are implicated.

Very true, perhaps we need to stop owning land and just share it all

That is what I was thinking too leila, kind of like a subtle satisfaction with the simple things. But to get to a point where we could do this there would have to be dramatic changes to ALL aspects of our society. Just gathering the resources to make just a computer requires a lot of different machines which all require resources to be built. Its like this technology is at the top of an industrial pyramid we have built, everything below it is required to make it.

[leila]

yeah i hear ya too i've been there and been involved with that small percent of the population who is totally against technology and really concious of every little thing they do. whic i think is a good thing, so not to discourage people looking at what they are doing and considering all the things that it comes from or the consequences. but what i am trying to say is that if we were moderate about our use of certain things and developed methods and designs that were conserving we could still have certain things and not be making such a big footprint.
most of the pollution that an average individual uses isnt even a small small part of the overall pollution. if only certain things were happening without all the other stuff piling oon top of it it would nt be a problem.
like with the forest for instance. i love the forests and we need trees as the lungs of our planet and as an essential componant of the atmosphere. so theres a lot of people who say not one more tree should be taken down. it would be nice to think that could happen. so now someone gets land and they want some open land to grow food and a few big trees to build a structure. they selectively harvest an area then they take down a few more trees leaving an area of forest and an area where the sun can come thru for their garden or living space. plus they have more than enough wood to build their house. there are people who would think this was all wrong, and would be extremely bothered by this. i am not it makes sense to selectively harvest a few trees and leave most. so it's not this kind of situation that cause the problem. but now if they go and clear cut a whole forest for no reason other than profit and then the wood sit s in a warehouse somewhere till it shipped to another warehouse(hidden costs gasoline futher damaging the atmosphere) then it gets shipped again to a store and the people drive their trucks to the store to pick it up and end up with a lot less wood and a lot less forest and the pollution is worse than ever. say just for absurdity sake that those trees were once covering the land they bought, and now theres no trees left. so they drive to the other store and they buy trees that came from elsewhere that arent even neccasarily sutied to that climate. so they dont grow all that well and they have to drive their trucks to the other store and now buy fertilizers and crap to make the tree grow better and what not...and on and on ...meanwhile they dont have any time to grow food so they drive to the store to buy food and all that after they drive home from their job that they work so they can afford to buy gasoline to drive around to all these stores and the gasoline that it took to get the food from the midwest or another country and the gasoline that took to ship those trees to the store.

hmmm i wonder if i lost my point here in all this extra stuff, extra movements and extra gasoline costs.

theres a lot of computers already built and a lot of recycled computer parts around by this point. theres actualy a lot of stuff just sitting in warehouses and stacked on trucks being driven along here and then there. thats why i am a freegan, but thats a different story. because the internet actually can serve a huge great service for people , especially those in rural and remote areas, and even allowing them a chance at creating incomes for themsleves ...communicate with people and keep in the loop it actually is worth the cost, i believe.
i think its causing no where near as much of a footprint as the food being shipped all over the place and all the extra steps and gasoline involved with that system, thats a much bigger problem. if we could get the big stuff sort ed out i think technology will eventually and i hope soon eliviate some of the problems we are facing....and in the meantime there are bigger more pressing problems, like how to break away from the global shipping routes system, and begin relying on our local envirnments and growing food everywhere so it doesnt have to be shipped around as much.

[leila]

and o yeah something i wanted to say about solar panels, apparently according to one of my glass blowing friends they are not all that difficult to produce. the main material is two sheet of glass...glass is an interesting substance and not that difficult or damaging to produce. if solar enrgy continues to be worked out ,perfected, it is quite likely they will be getting less expensive. solar energy i think works best when combined with another system. i have lived with only a pelting wheel for energy it was very interesting and enough to get a radio stereo and few basic kitchen tools blender food processor and some lights. and just free and no cost to environment. so you can have some luxuries and live pretty well without being destructive. if more people put their minds and ideas to creating even better systems that that, and more efficient appliances, then i think we could get enough with very little toll on the earth.

[{{d*@*b}}]

We have to wrap our heads around waste as a resource we have all the plastics, glass and silicon we could ever need in the land fills. So we should learn to mine the landifills on an industrial level. Make old technology new technology.

And if you really think about it any thing we create is natural because we are natural and our resources are natural so anything created by man is natural. Much like the way a beaver dam is natural or a birds nest. The difference is we need to improve our creations to respect the earth. The earth has to constantly be in mind as we create. This was a problem of our ancestors and thus a problem of today that needs to be changed. I honestly don't believe the computer is the end all and be all of technology or that technology is the end all and be all of human creation. Computers and technology will have their final day as well but only after the next step is taken. As for today computers and technology are some of our greatest creations but we have been creatively stagnant probably due to mind control. What I am saying is imagine ancient humans never got past the advancement of man made fire. We would be burning everything down. This is kind of what is happening with humanity these days we are stagnating mean while the earth is being destroyed but does that mean we have to stop using technology... nah we just need to break our dependance to sloth like convenience and thoughtlessness and change the way we make and use technology.
I am speaking generally by the way.

[sshenry]

To completely reject ALL technology is like putting on a blindfold and turning our backs on everything that has been accomplished so far - and in ignoring the problems that have brought us to this critical point.

There are aspects of technology that are in synch with a sustainable lifestyle PROVIDED, as {{d*@*b}} said that we use the platics and materials already in circulation. In fact, it would be COUNTERproductive to ignore them and just go straight back to no technology whatsoever. The key to sustainable living is to stop depleting our resources.

The computer I'm typing on can be made of recycled plastics and metals, the electricity that powers it can be produced by the sun or wind or water and
We made the mess, yes, now lets do something about it...in this case reusing what is already there to sustain the technology already in place. We can use the old silicone and plastics to make the new computers, the old metals to be melted down and re-cast as housing materials etc. New means of recycling, of water purification, of food production, these would all be extremely useful in reaching a point of sustainable living and would best be reached by tapping into the computing power of computers to help us achieve our goals.

To reject all technology is to reject the advances in medical sciences that allow us to diagnose and treat previously untreatable diseases and conditions (I'm not talking about the overperscription of medication for things like depression and ADHD or other conditions that could be addressed with alternative therapies) but emergency medical procedures that save lives and prolong life.

To reject all technology is to go back to the primitive lifestyles where due to the difficulty of maintaining a living, only a few select individuals could be spared to persue the accumulation of knowledge and spiritual persuits.

To reject all technology is to say that we have to go back to using leaves for toilet paper and twigs for brushing our teeth (most toothbrushes are made out of plastic after all) and farming our land with animal labor, and using hit-or miss methods when digging wells.

Technology can be helpful

It is not a rejection of technology that will save us - but learning to balance our needs with our resources and live within our means (globally speaking) - keeping a "cash" reserve (of energy and resources) on hand in case of an emergency and not spending excessively, extending ourselves on revolving credit that is going to charge us excessive amounts of late fees and finance charges that will leave us bankrupt.

Just a thought

[{{d*@*b}}]

I use a tooth brush made out of recycled wood

[{{d*@*b}}]

When speaking of respect for the Earth I think SSHenry is right sustainability is key.

[sshenry]

I use a tooth brush made out of recycled wood

[{{d*@*b}}]

I really do. Its a really nice toothbrush. The best I ever had. I can't remember the brand but I'll let you guys know when I figure it out. The brush part is interchangable so you don't have to throw away the handle.

[sshenry]

What are your bristles made of?

[leila]

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