I’ve thought of several book ideas lately. Since I can only work on one at a time and don’t want to distract myself, though I’ll keep up the sidcha of posting daily here, I’ll post some titles, sketches, and outlines here when I think of them. I welcome feedback.
Draft ideas
Title:
How Not to Fly: How to make your most harmful activity feel repugnant and easy to quit
Chapters (unordered):
My initial journey:
- From seeing problems as environmental therefore not acting to seeing them as hurting people and acting
- From starting acting to thinking of avoiding flying for a year and freaking out
- From committing to a year with fear to, within a few months, finding more of what I feared losing and committing to a second year, then a third
- To finding that pattern in many other places
Stories from others:
- Norwegian friend: asking questions up to if he flew to see M.
- Swedish community that switched from flying being default and non-flyers having to justify to not flying being default and flyers having to justify
- Poet/mother friend whose mother flew so much that she told her she was no longer welcome to visit her or her children (the mother’s grandchildren)
My experiences:
- Discovering more adventure, for example bike camping
- Connecting more with family
- More culture, for example shooting and Westminster
Observations:
- All places with walking surfaces smoothed for wheeled suitcases are one assimilated culture
- Bali covered with plastic, as are all once-remote places
- Patagonia founders camping in Patagonia, developing gear to colonize by using more plastic
- People who didn’t fly: Lincoln, Jesus, Muhammad, Aristotle, Einstein at time of discovering relativity and miracle year, etc
- Many 5-year-old kids have traveled more miles than Marco Polo. Why traveled more?
- Planes do to nations what cars do to cities
- Flying tears communities and families apart. Can you think of anything that tears them apart more effectively? Maybe fentanyl and meth.
- Person on podcast credited flying with spreading cure for Covid so fast. Left out that it first spread the disease so fast.
Some numbers
- People who fly tend to think nearly all fly. A few percent fly across an ocean or multiple times per year.
- 9 million people die per year from breathing polluted air
Insanity:
- People harp on BP creating individual carbon footprint. They use it to excuse their hurting people. They get back at BP by buying more of its product.
- Today’s business models: Why we fight to keep what makes us miserable
Frame:
- Not about saving planet. About avoiding hurting people.
- Not about emissions, but about funding lobbyists, advertisers, politicians to promote more extraction.
- Distinguish Type 1 from Type 2 pollution and depletion
I agree with very little of this notion of “why not fly” possible scenarios that make this the best option to be with family:
1. Person A works long hours and has a family and has llimited time off. Driving is not an option if vacation tme is short. Should the answer be ” I love you family member – but I dont want to pollute so my family and I wont visit for the holiday? That is selfish
2. We live in a global world. Yes we travel more than the people you mentioned from centuries ago. families lived in a village and rarely travelled. We have an economy and work/family life that demands travel. If not an option for you, I think “hermit” status may be a consaideration
Thanks for listening
You’re welcome and thanks for writing.
Your perspective is why I’m writing my current book and not yet writing a book on not flying. I think you’ll find it valuable and it may lead you to consider your view. I’d write more, but I expect to make public a good part of it in about a month. I hope you’ll look at it
I’ll comment on “I dont want to pollute so my family and I wont visit for the holiday? That is selfish”. I try to clarify that my goal is more specific than not polluting. I don’t want to hurt innocent people, which pollution does. The fifth amendment of the US Constitution makes clear a specific role for the government: “No person shall … be deprived of life, liberty, and property without due process of law.” Pollution deprives people of life, liberty, and property without due process of law. It violates the consent of the governed, which the Declaration of Independence states as necessary for a government to be just.
I am doing my best to live by the principles this nation was founded on and hope to help the government enforce these principles, since it isn’t now.
I don’t frame pollution as some abstract idea. Pollution hurts people. I don’t consider it selfish to avoid hurting innocent people or following the law of the land.
I do consider it selfish to choose to live flying distance from family and then claim one has no choice but to fly to visit family. Everyone who flies has their knee-jerk responses that they have no choice to live flying distance away, and other unquestioned cultural beliefs. I’m working to restore a culture that lives by principles of liberty, freedom, equality, and democracy, which means no longer violating the Constitution and Declaration of Independence.
My next book covers the above more thoroughly. What I just wrote is an incomplete snippet.