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  • From: "Kathleen O'Brien Blair" <ktho@comcast.net>
  • To: "'permaculture'" <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [permaculture] The idea of "enough"
  • Date: Sun, 23 Dec 2007 21:09:10 -0800

Dear Folks:

This subject has been on my mind of late. Perhaps it's the Chri$tma$
frenzy that sets it off every year, because every year I'm given to
ruminate on it.

Ahhhh - the Culture of the Shiney Thing....falalalala

So my question to the list is: What do you consider to be "enough?"

It seems to me that a big part of our problem in the United States today
is that we've been headlong pursuing wealth without a concomitant
cultural agreement as to what "enough" is.

Past a certain point money is a burden - you have to manage it, protect
it, find ways to give it away, pay taxes on it....it's a prison. And
stuff is the same - you have to maintain it, clean it, find room for it,
fix it if it can be fixed (a rarity these days in the "disposables"
economy) and replace it when it can't be, fight the inevitable
dependence on it and addiction to it, and keep it from being stolen -
yeesh.

What is "enough?" I think it may be some threshold state whereby:

one knows that one's roof over one's head is secure, can be
replaced in kind if destroyed and that the ability to replace it is in
one's own power - not the mercy of others;
one knows that they are healthy in body mind and soul and that
one has the means through good clean food, water, air, useful work that
is also exercise, and a spiritual life of some kind, to stay that way
one knows that if one becomes sick or injured one has prepared
the resources whereby on can get the medical care and treatment
necessary to restore health and if not restore it, to improvise, adapt
and overcome it;
one knows their food, fuel, shelter, clothing and
family/networking assets are secure and is empowered as much as possible
to keep it that way;
one knows that one is flexible, adaptable, and able to improvise
and overcome obstacles and challenges to all of the above because one
has the means whereby to do so through family and support connections as
well as materiele, strength and adequate funds
one has skills and skill sets that allow one to live wherever
one wants and to make "a living" that is "enough"
one knows that what one does for "a living" is useful and plays
it's own small part in making a meaningful life i.e. on e has a strong
sense of one's own "purpose"
one knows that one is a useful and valuable part of things
larger than themselves - families, heritages, cultures, communities,
bioregions, etc.
one has adequate funds to purchase what they cannot or will not
make for themselves, and to do things in life that they enjoy in the
manner that they wish to enjoy it (travel, books, movies, skiing, etc)
one is neither an island nor a bee in the "collective" but
rather is a little of both - a wonderful paradoxical hybrid that at once
enjoys "enough" self-sufficiency, independence, and sovereignty, as well
as "enough" family and social connection in dynamic balance which is
Life-giving to the entire symbiotic - (or even perhaps chimeric?)
"organism"


This is probably not the entirety of what "enough" might be to anyone
else or even to a group of people. Just fodder for discussion.

Yr. Obed. Scrvnr.
Kathleen






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