Polluting less isn’t extreme. It’s traditional.
People call me extreme for not flying, taking years to fill a load of trash, and unplugging my fridge, but compared to most how people lived for almost all of human existence, I’m approaching normal.
Refrigerators, for example, barely existed one hundred years ago and cost nearly double a Model T. For most of human existence, people didn’t have refrigerators. We ate more fresh food. Today people consume doof, increasingly own two refrigerators, and don’t know how to cook from scratch. Our food is less fresh, less healthy, and increasingly replaced with doof. People are addicted.
That sounds extreme.
What I’ve done these past few months off the grid, like eating more fresh, taking advantage of summer vegetables for salads every day, waking with the sun, connecting less to the internet, reading more, writing more by hand, volunteering more, and so on, are traditional.
From this vantage, American culture is extreme. Sadly, extremely polluting, addicted, gluttonous, and slothful.
Polluting less isn’t extreme. It’s traditional.
I’m not extreme. I’m traditional.
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