Freedom

Year 3, day 3 with my fridge unplugged

Year 3, day 3 with my fridge unplugged

I forgot to post that I just started my third year with my fridge unplugged, the last year and a half with the whole apartment unplugged. Why did I forget? Because it's a non-event. Last summer was challenging as I had never made it through a summer without a fridge and I was worried things would go bad faster. I knew then that all humans who ever lived didn't use refrigerators before last century, as does much of the world today. This summer more beliefs buoyed me: I made it last summer, I knew more how to ferment, I knew more how to shop, I knew fresh produce doesn't need refrigeration, frozen pizza, ice cream, and doof do. I had heard everyone knee-jerk parrot the…

October 2, 2023

This week’s selected media: September 24, 2023: Cobalt Red

This week’s selected media: September 24, 2023: Cobalt Red

I read this week: Cobalt Red, by Siddhart Kara: Of all the books I've recommended lately, I recommend Cobalt Red the top. If you believe imperialism, colonialism, and slavery are things of the past, you're in for more than a rude awakening. You are funding it, especially if you like electric vehicles. I often clarify that solar and wind are not clean, green, or renewable since they require fossil fuels to make, transport, operate, and decommission, as well as nonrenewable minerals. Cobalt Red reports how all rechargeable batteries are produces with what can only be called slave labor, as well as widespread injury, death, rape, displacement, theft, and more. I recorded a podcast episode with Siddharth, so look for it soon. But read this book.…

September 24, 2023

Colonialism disguised as travel

Freedom / Nature

Colonialism disguised as travel

I was looking up indigenous cultures from New Guinea and stumbled on this video. It looks like it's showing a lovely, diverse place to expand your horizons if you're a wealthy American or European. Every bit of of it destroys the cultures and environment it purports to celebrate. It's the insouciance I described in colonial cultures in Insouciance, colonialism, and sustainability. The travel the woman in the video presents is just going to the zoo. It isn't even travel. The part where she says she'd pick a short flight over a bumpy car ride . . . that's not travel, that's effortless. It's the opposite of "it's the journey, not the destination." It's Refusing the journey in favor of the destination, while wrecking both. The…

September 2, 2023

What will plugging my apartment back in feel like?

Choosing/Decision-Making / Freedom

What will plugging my apartment back in feel like?

First some context: When I challenged myself to avoid flying for a year, I expected the worst year of my life---my family disowning me, running out of money, etc. Instead, after a couple months I unexpectedly found the experience rewarding enough to go for another year. Then each year led to another. At some point I figured I'd never fly again. It's easy enough not to get on a plane. Never flying again got appealing enough I have no problem imagining it. When I stopped eating meat in 1990, I didn't know if I'd eat it again since at one time I liked some of it. After a while, I had lost the taste for it and now the thought of eating meat is unpleasant…

August 14, 2023

The electric company is texting me to use less electricity, but I’m using none. Stop wasting so much, people.

Addiction / Freedom / Nature

The electric company is texting me to use less electricity, but I’m using none. Stop wasting so much, people.

I closed my account with Con Ed since I wasn't using their power, but apparently Americans are too entitled and can't stop themselves. They're complaining and unhappy. I wish I could help them enjoy life more, but the technology they thought brought them comfort and convenience seems to have made them less resilient, happy, healthy, or safe and more addicted, dependent, and petulant. I prefer freedom to addiction, which I think in 2023 makes me un-American. Sad, I remember it being the other way. Here's the text Con Ed sent: ConEd Alert: We're preparing for the heatwave in your area. Please, limit your energy use between 2 pm and 10 pm to help keep service reliable. If you lose power, reply OUT to get updates.…

July 28, 2023

Why we need a constitutional amendment on environmental sustainability

Freedom / Leadership / Nature

Why we need a constitutional amendment on environmental sustainability

The United States has a Bill of Rights in its Constitution guaranteeing several freedoms around religion, speech, the press, bearing arms, search and seizure, speedy trials, and a few others. Imagine you woke up to headlines that for some technicality no one had noticed for over two centuries, the Bill of Rights had been improperly processed and turned out it was invalid. That is, imagine the Bill of Rights didn't exist. The government could write laws limiting religion, speech, the press, bearing arms, and so on far more than before. People and corporations with power would see a sudden opportunity to gain power by encroaching on rights you thought you had. The government could take over the media and churches. It could stop you from…

July 19, 2023

Where Artificial Intelligence will go and why (it’s not where everyone is saying)

Addiction / Artificial Intelligence / Freedom

Where Artificial Intelligence will go and why (it’s not where everyone is saying)

ChatGPT is surprising everyone with what it can do, how far beyond expectations, and in so many areas. Where will artificial intelligence go next? What will it do? Whom will it affect and how? It's hard for people who didn't live when people viewed beating a human at chess as absolutely impossible for computers, let alone playing a decent game. Today we can only conceive of chess as something computers can do, no problem. Each stage of chess going from being impossible for computers to play, then possible, then better than any human surprised nearly everyone. Then computers went from best at chess to best at go effectively overnight, notwithstanding the recent quirk a human found that computers will overcome if they haven't already. People…

July 18, 2023

At last, I dropped my electrical utility account

Addiction / Freedom / Stories

At last, I dropped my electrical utility account

Despite using zero watts over more than a year, I've been paying over $20 per month for an electric bill. Part of it was to a power company that uses more wind and solar that charged me a monthly fee of another $6 or so. The other part was $17 a month to Con Ed, the power company, simply for being connected to the grid, not even using power. I considered it insurance in case something failed, but I figured two things. First, I haven't used power in my apartment in over a year. Second, they said I could restore power with a call. So I cancelled my Con Ed account. This is freedom. Here's what I stopped funding: Smart aleck, know-it-alls will point out…

July 14, 2023

A Role Model for Our Times: Aristides de Sousa Mendes, fired for saving thousands of refugees from Nazis

Freedom / Leadership / Models / Nature

A Role Model for Our Times: Aristides de Sousa Mendes, fired for saving thousands of refugees from Nazis

Failures of imagination and leadership in sustainability are the hallmarks of our time. They mean that when even sustainably-minded people try to imagine people with political or business authority acting for sustainability, they can't think past how to make sustainability profitable or get votes. I'm going to lead CEOs to see themselves as humans first, CEOs second---politicians, journalists, celebrities, and so on too. Oskar Schindler didn't save those Jews from the Nazis because it was good for business. Robert Carter III didn't free the most slaves in America before the Civil War "to do well by doing good." They weren't used by their businesses to do what the businesses wanted, like more profit by local practices of Nazism and slavery; they used their businesses to…

July 1, 2023

Speed reading bedtime stories to your kids: Some things don’t benefit from making more efficient

Freedom / Nature / Relationships

Speed reading bedtime stories to your kids: Some things don’t benefit from making more efficient

We thoughtlessly value efficiency and chase it places it doesn't make sense. I call it Speed reading bedtime stories to your kids. It makes sense: if you read your kids bedtime stories faster, you can move on to other things. Or rather, it obviously doesn't. Yet we do it with takeout food, doof, packaging, social media instead of spending time with people in person, flying around the world when there's infinite wonder, beauty, and diversity under our noses. Speed reading bedtime stories to your kids achieves the opposite goal we want. So do all the other things. The Opposite: Spending the Time the Relationship Takes With Those We Love If you think it's privileged to spend time with people you love, you don't understand how…

June 30, 2023

What’s special about 436?

Freedom / Nature / Stories

What’s special about 436?

While reading ProPublica's story How a Grad Student Uncovered the Largest Known Slave Auction in the U.S., I came across these paragraphs about Lauren Davila finding a newspaper ad from 1835 announcing someone having sold 600 slaves in one auction: A sale of 600 people would mark a grim new record—by far. Until Davila’s discovery, the largest known slave auction in the U.S. was one that was held over two days in 1859 just outside Savannah, Georgia, roughly 100 miles down the Atlantic coast from Davila’s home. At a racetrack just outside the city, an indebted plantation heir sold hundreds of enslaved people. The horrors of that auction have been chronicled in books and articles, including The New York Times’ 1619 Project and “The Weeping…

June 24, 2023

My sidchas, standard procedures, and preferences

Fitness / Freedom / Habits / My Favorite Posts / SIDCHAs / Volunteering

My sidchas, standard procedures, and preferences

I meant just to list all my sidchas in my post Freedom exists in structure; it’s not chaos, randomness, or luck. Here’s my structure and freedom, but I made a mistake. I included standard procedures with sidchas. I didn't think of the distinction. One is habits. The other is the best way to do something. I've written about sidchas. What about procedures? If there's a better way and worse way, why do the worse way? Choosing a best way saves mental effort on top of the benefits of doing something better. Doing it consistently allows for continual improvement and increasing self-awareness. For example, living on the fifth floor, I could take the elevator or stairs. I decided once and for all to take the stairs.…

May 6, 2023

If transported to 1850, would you rather be an abolitionist with little hope of success or a slave owner with comfort and convenience?

If transported to 1850, would you rather be an abolitionist with little hope of success or a slave owner with comfort and convenience?

An exercise to the reader: say a genie snapped his fingers and forced you to live in 1850 with your choice of two conditions: As an abolitionist fighting apparently insurmountable odds with little chance of success (say you didn’t know the Thirteenth Amendment was coming) or As a plantation owner with material comfort and convenience, but knowing you’d feel as The Ruling Race quoted people, feeling guilt and shame but mostly suppressing and denying it. Try rationalizing flying, bottled water, and disposable diapers with not living option 2. You can't. sorry to break it to you, but the sooner you get the water splashed in your face, the sooner you can act like a human with compassion. Sadly, Nearly everyone today chooses option 2. If…

April 19, 2023

One month without even my “cheat” of plugging in at work. Then both batteries died.

Freedom / Nature / Volunteering

One month without even my “cheat” of plugging in at work. Then both batteries died.

Today marked one month since I last plugged in at NYU. I made it a whole month without plugging my computer, phone, or anything else to the grid. I still used power, and plenty, taking subway trips, train trips to New Jersey and Philadelphia, and more. How? The days got longer. My skills to avoid polluting developed. The company whose power station (battery with many charging ports) I used sent me a battery of the next generation to test, so I had a second battery and more than double the energy I did before. When I disconnected my apartment last May, I didn't see how I'd make more than a few days so I didn't try to figure out how to do it best. Remember,…

April 13, 2023

Embracing and celebrating our limits makes life constructive. Otherwise you crave what you can’t get.

Addiction / Freedom / Tips

Embracing and celebrating our limits makes life constructive. Otherwise you crave what you can’t get.

We can't create more time or energy. We get what we get. It doesn't matter how much you want twenty-five hours in a day. You don't get them. Not if you're rich or connected either. Likewise with energy. There is only so much energy available. People can dream of unlimited energy, but they still have to eat and fill their car with gas because their energy runs out. Our culture has grown to value going beyond limits of time and energy. My podcast guest Oliver Burkeman's book Four Thousand Weeks suggests that we stop trying to overcome limitations on time and instead embrace those limits. I promote that approach with energy. Instead of trying to fly to every place and visit every person you wish…

April 8, 2023

Corruption: when maintaining integrity and character is too hard for someone

Freedom / Leadership

Corruption: when maintaining integrity and character is too hard for someone

I tend to think of people becoming corrupt under the influence of someone intentionally corrupting them. I tend to think of the corrupter as a mustache-twirling, self-interested person offering bribes or using other tools. I also often talk about how sustainability advocates undermine themselves by depending so much on polluting, depleting activities like flying, ordering takeout, and so on. I point out that it's hard to impossible to lead people without integrity, character, trust, and living by your values. If you depend on polluting, depleting activities, you'll feel internal conflict in trying to end pollution and depletion. In short: You can't end the global heroin trade if you're worried about your own supply. I see a lot of people who say they want to increase…

April 6, 2023

The Montgomery Bus Boycott versus flying

The Montgomery Bus Boycott versus flying

The Montgomery Bus Boycott addressed people being treated as second-class citizens; they weren't allowed to use bus seats equally. The people harmed acted to improve their situation. They held back from using the bus for over a year, instead walking, carpooling, avoiding trips, and so on. Airplanes and the pollution and depletion they cause harm everyone in the world, though the people where the fuels and minerals are extracted, near airports, and in tourist spots that become wrecked most. Why don't we boycott planes? What's worse between treating people as second-class citizens and killing them? I see the biggest difference between the situations that unlike the bus, with the plane, the person benefiting from using the vehicle isn't the one suffering from the pollution and…

April 3, 2023

The Source of Our Polluting Culture

Freedom / Nature

The Source of Our Polluting Culture

Consider two cultures, one living sustainably, one unsustainably. Does the following sound familiar? The sustainable one must be living within its means. In fact, it must have some abundance to withstand an occasional flood or drought. Many cultures have survived and thrived for tens to hundreds of thousands of years. The unsustainable one is living beyond its means, decreasing what resources it needs to survive. In most cases, it can either change its culture sustainable or see its population collapse when key resources run out. If it has the technology and organization, as it sees its resources run out, it may look at the sustainable culture’s abundance and decide to take some of it. If the unsustainable culture stays unsustainable, it will use up its…

March 26, 2023

I last flew today in 2016. Starting year 7 free from most people’s greatest way of hurting innocent people.

Freedom / Habits / Nature

I last flew today in 2016. Starting year 7 free from most people’s greatest way of hurting innocent people.

I love traveling, exchanging culture, visiting family, and exploring nature, which is why I will never fly again. It destroys all those things. In flying as with any addiction, people addicted experience the addiction as warm, supportive, loving, like family. You tell me what you fear losing when ending an addiction and I'll tell you exactly what you'll gain more of. When you stop flying, you'll experience more traveling, exchanging culture, visiting family, and exploring nature. If you still fly, what I said will sound like telling a heroin addict that stopping taking heroin with bring my euphoria, love, and meaning. They won't believe you just like you likely won't believe me, but you know they'll prefer life without the addiction.

March 23, 2023

Proposals for freedom and sustainability

Freedom / Leadership / Nature

Proposals for freedom and sustainability

I've been thinking about what legal changes I see along the lines of the Thirteenth Amendment. That amendment helped resolve the most partisan issue in the nation's history, including hundreds of thousands of young men killed in the Civil War. Today it unites us. I envision the following proposals transforming our culture and leading to unity, though people who profit from the old ways will resist, as they did with slavery. I'll add to the list as I come up with ideas. Treat addictive products and services by law how we treat other forms of coercion and undermining of free trade, including slavery. We recognize coercion through confinement, violence, and threat of violence makes trade not free. We make slavery illegal. Coercion through addiction also…

March 18, 2023

How can a libertarian condone pollution?

Freedom / Nature

How can a libertarian condone pollution?

I don't know if any organizations speak for most libertarians, but I've been reading the pages What is a libertarian? from Libertarianism.org and the Platform of the Libertarian Party. The former begins Libertarians believe that, in politics, liberty is the most important value. Almost everyone wants freedom for themselves, but a libertarian also seeks to protect and expand the freedom of others. When people are free, we can create a more just, more prosperous, safer, and better world for everyone. and continues A libertarian is committed to the principle that liberty is the most important political value. Liberty means being free to make your own choices about your own life, that what you do with your body and your property ought to be up to you. Other…

March 10, 2023

See me on German Public TV describing life with my apartment disconnected from the electric grid

Freedom / Leadership / Nature

See me on German Public TV describing life with my apartment disconnected from the electric grid

Check out this video, "Josh Spodek's apartment disconnected from the electric grid in Manhattan on German TV": (click the cc in the bottom right for English subtitles) (Note: I told the director over and over how the important story was the mission and strategy underneath, but journalists only cover what they can see and show so what you see is the superficial surface of my work. Journalists on the environment: It's like they see a child drowning and instead of helping the child, they write a story about it. *sigh*) https://youtu.be/64rqk2ulATM The notes: How to start systemic change: systemic change begins with personal change. You cannot lead others to live by values you live the opposite of, whereas living by your values reveals how to…

March 9, 2023

Freedom exists in structure; it’s not chaos, randomness, or luck. Here’s my structure and freedom.

Choosing/Decision-Making / Fitness / Freedom / Habits / SIDCHAs

Freedom exists in structure; it’s not chaos, randomness, or luck. Here’s my structure and freedom.

Freedom exists in structure. It's not chaos, randomness, or luck. When I find something works in my life, I make it automatic. For many people, diet and exercise seem horror shows, or mysteries, wondering what they should do, how often, how much, and so on. When the most important bases of my life are automatic, I don't have to think about them. I can focus on everything else. People might see the regularity of my exercise or diet plans as restrictive, but it creates mental freedom and the results I want. As far as I can tell, by choosing the most effective exercise and diet, I work the minimum to achieve my level of fitness. I would feel uncomfortable to be less fit. Likewise with…

February 25, 2023

More Freedom From Their Greedy Mitts Getting Into All Our Business

Addiction / Freedom / Nature

More Freedom From Their Greedy Mitts Getting Into All Our Business

I belong to Flight Free USA, which helps motivate people to avoid the wretched addiction of flying. I recommend joining and taking their pledge to avoid flying. You'll be glad you did. I recommend reading the profiles of people who have pledged and found the joy, fun, and freedom of not flying. Their last newsletter inspired me to think of other initiatives to start that could improve people's lives similarly by helping them kick addictions based in pollution. Having disconnected my apartment from the electric grid with the goal of a month not knowing how I'd make even a few days, I'm now in my ninth month and wonder if a parallel project to Flight Free might make sense. How about something like Grid Free…

February 23, 2023

Ending polluting may seem hard, but the only thing worse than ending pollution is not ending it.

Freedom / Nature

Ending polluting may seem hard, but the only thing worse than ending pollution is not ending it.

I was talking to an Army Ranger. He said one thing he and his peers said to each other during the most grueling parts of training, when they wanted to give up was: The only thing worse than being a Ranger is not being a Ranger. He said it motivated them to keep going and love the experience, the challenge, the self-awareness of reaching your potential, acting in service of others and your greatest values. It rang true when applied to sustainability. People seem to see not polluting as a fate worse than death, or as grueling as Ranger training. Every step of living more sustainably brings freedom, joy, fun, and other reward, when motivated for intrinsic reasons, which we all have. So I say:…

February 21, 2023

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