Many of us have a lurking suspicion that our way of living in America is unsustainable - a bit like a house built on sand or made of cards.
Our culture is obese with quick food, cell phones, new cars, plastic bottles, bigger homes, and shiny, disposable ‘things’. We choose not to think too deeply about industry practices or the corporatized system that can make and put on our doorstep whatever will sell. Even the poorest among us can acquire a constant stream of stuff thanks to excess cast-offs.
A nagging background presence like a hangnail reminds us that our ease is dependent on expendable resources, uncountable waste, and reliance on global suppliers. We accept this as the price of progress. And while we may have an underlying dis-ease about how this system is even possible on a planet with finite resources, have so many humans ever had more access to things, information, food, or health care as we Americans do?
We justify the trade-offs because it’s easier in the short run. We willingly trade our small towns for big box stores and online suppliers who will never sponsor our Little League teams, contribute to our tax base, or keep money circulating in our communities. We release our ability to work on our own cars or appliances in exchange for new ones every few years. We abandon our gardens and kitchen skills for quick food because we are busy. We barter away our privacy for a super-computer we carry wherever we go. And we surrender autonomy over our own health to experts, prescriptions, and medical procedures because we believe technology will save us and we don’t have time to change the way we live.
We’ve become largely dependent on someone else to make the essentials of our lives – to care for our health, to provide our food, to decide what our children will learn. And most of these providers don’t live anywhere near us.
Covid pulled back the veil on just how dependent we have become. People couldn’t get to their doctors, couldn’t get prescriptions in time, and missed preventative appointments. Huge wealth shifted online and to mega-stores while Main Street was forced to stay closed. The supply chain failed for the first time in many of our memories. And health care didn’t save us.
Now we have inflation barreling down on us in the housing market, at the grocery store, and at the gas pump. Meanwhile, you can’t give your right arm to find skilled people to fix your house or haul big trash to the dump. Or enough local workers to serve food or care for seniors. The stock market is unpredictable and scary.
If we are honest with ourselves, this situation of dependence is unsettling.
This Substack series offers an antidote to the excesses and liabilities of globalism, to dependence on things far away from ourselves, and to the death of place-based community. We three original contributors have pooled decades of grassroots-level experience in education, wellness and holistic health, real foods cooking, food policy, environmentalism, economic development, and community activism to offer a concept for restoring community, securing sovereignty, and building place-based resilience.
We call this vision Living Well Locally. In it, we suggest taking health as an economic strategy and using lifestyle-based wellness as a tool and driver for regeneration of people, places, and planet.
If you are ready to concede that our current model has too many hidden costs and is not giving the outcomes we really want for health, wealth, and happiness, then follow these Substack writings, leave a comment or question. We would love to hear your thoughts about how leaders, from grassroots local to national, could begin to realize a vision of Living Well Locally.
Next Up: A Simple Strategy for Change