The first major step of my journey towards some form of meaningful change begins tomorrow Oct 21 2020. I will be flying from Bangkok, Thailand to Chiang Mai, Thailand to begin my time as a volunteer at Thailand’s most popular (and I believe largest) organic farm – Pun Pun.
I will be learning under the guidance of experienced volunteers and experts of organic farming, namely the very well known Jon Jondai. I have been watching his videos on YouTube about various topics and have found each of them to be not only super engaging, but very much in line with what I dream of one day achieving – self sustainability.
Self sustainability is often laughed off as going back to stone age living in an era of technology and progress. From my perspective, building all of the various complex systems that we’ve now come to rely on without keeping one foot in the realm of sustainability is a recipe for disaster, and propagates unfair employment conditions. I will explain.
Realistically human beings require the basics for survival – shelter, food, clothing. While these are basic, they are fundamental and essential, and not knowing how to propagate these fundamentals leaves oneself open to being swayed by the ebbs and flows of the world economy. Right now many are struggling due to 2020 being a year of many major challenges. If you can treat your own water, if you can supply most or all of your own food, if you can build strong building structures with natural materials, then you are more capable of using those skills to weather difficult economic times. If for example you live in an apartment in the big city, you have no space to do anything such as fabricate and experiment with ideas, no land to grow food, and all of your utilities must come from purchasing them.
On the flip side, homesteading and self sustainability is hard work. It’s not an easy exchange of learning a job and then getting paid. Self sustainability is something you need to truly desire if it’s going to work for you, because otherwise you would certainly feel like you’re uselessly trying to revive stone age techniques, only to return to the modern standard of living anyway. Modern standard living brings stability and safety, but not always. There have been and still are many examples of municipalities failing to provide clean water, entire product stacks in grocery stores being recalled due to salmonella poisoning, and power outages leaving residents without power until the utility is able to safely restore power. Naturally nothing can be made 100% fail proof, it would be foolish to expect such an idea.
While I don’t necessarily believe that everyone should practice 100% sustainability, I do feel that we would all be better served if everyone were educated in self sustainability and at least given the opportunity to choose for themselves how much they would like to provide for themselves. And when that decision is made they can competently go about how to achieve what they are setting out to build and run. As it stands, the public schooling system provides learning to participate in society as a consumer, and as an employee, and not much more. Parents aren’t absolved from teaching their kids what they believe in, however, there are some families in situations that are first generation getting their feet on the ground, they may not have had the opportunity to receive quality education or to have learned even rudimentary teachings from their parents. Everyone has their own situation.
I have decided to follow what I feel is most important, and I am taking the responsibility upon myself to learn and become what I feel is valuable. At the very least I’ll learn some cutting edge gardening skills and meet some new interesting people, and at best I could learn a new way of living that will align with my belief system, and begin laying the groundwork for a lifetime of happiness and health.
Whatever the outcome, I’m not ready to head back to the rat race just yet, I know where that leads and I’m not built to play the game. At worst, I’ll head back defeated with my tail between my legs and become an engineer again. Time will tell, but for now – time to take the first step.
I will leave this post with a video of Jon Jondai titled: Why Do we Make Life So Hard?
The Triple H Initiative 