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19/10/2012
A Different Kind of Life During the 1990’s I co-created a temporary community that met four times throughout a year. The camps began as a way of us getting together cheaply but we very quickly discovered that living in close relationship to the natural world with no access to electricity, gas or anything other than a standpipe for running water inevitably led us to behave in different ways with each other and with the land, and that we valued these new ways of relating.
We had to share living and sleeping space to keep warm. Even in August the nights get cold and damp so it was an easy choice between freezing in the equivalent of a kite or snuggling down on carpets in a yurt heated by a woodburner. We cooked and ate together, pooling money, sharing tasks as diverse as chopping vegetables to keeping a fire going and we learned that we had to get on with it if we were to eat before dark – something particularly important for children and our more elderly members. Living in nature is far from romantic. Nature can be cold and wet, can seriously sunburn your children, gets dark at 6pm, rains interminably, can be incredibly painful if you walk barefoot on frost, grab the blackthorn, rose or hawthorn without care and can poke you in the eye in the dark. Learning to live comfortably with these realities leveled the field in ways that were a revelation: people who were affluent couldn’t buy someone else to do it for them academically able people couldn’t just talk or teach about how much they knew about walking on a field at night. Small people, most often women, were often better at it than people who are bigger, often men. Children who didn’t get on at school suddenly discovered they were superb at chopping wood or keeping a fire going or putting up structures, skills that had a direct impact on the wellbeing of the whole community. There was kudos and respect for people of any age who kept the site ticking along and these were almost always people who did not usually experience kudos or respect in the rest of their lives. Children and adults learned to work as a team, to take risks, to expand every sense, to go for a walk rather than have an argument, to seek knowledge from the natural world – particularly the wisdom of knowing that we will die evidenced by bird and mammal bones – to get cold and not get a cold, to be contentedly alone in a group, to live together, to seek solitude and to slow down. All without any risk of being knocked over by a car. There were certainly dramas and we learned to factor in very structured meetings where everyone could say how they were doing and be heard by everyone else. Some of the rules that evolved from experience were to not offer advice during these meetings, and to take responsibility for ones own physical and emotional wellbeing: getting enough sleep, eating and drinking enough. From time to time people became very upset indeed and, not being told what to do, not being given advice, not being shut up and not being allowed to dominate a camp, people also moved through their own feelings to a new place of understanding for themselves. In research terms, we know that obesity is rising as people seldom leave some kind of chair, that the behaviours of many children are becoming disturbing, that attention disorders, anxiety and depression are rapidly increasing. Anecdotally, people are becoming less creative, less positively imaginative, more risk averse and terminally bored. We have lost contact with the earth, the elements and communal life. It’s superb to have ones own front door, washing machine, cooker and fridge, but we’ve also lost neighbourliness and places where our grandparents might meet to share physical work. This is why I’m so pleased about the New Economics Foundation report suggesting that if we work a 4-day week and promote gardening this will "provide the answer to every headline problem at the moment." From low unemployment to significantly reduced mental and physical health problems, spending less time obsessing about being seen to be a Hard Working Tax Payer and focusing more on creating, nurturing and simply living as part of the natural world can only be positive. |
CategoriesAll Abandonment Abuse Ancestors Anger Anxiety Ash Wednesday Attitude Banking Bereavement Birthday Bravery Breivik Bystander Effect Camila Batmanghelidjh Carnival Cbt Challenger Charlotte Bevan Childbirth Childhood Children Christmas Coaching Compassion Contemplation Control Counselling Culture Dalai Lama Death Death Cafe Democracy Denial Depression Domestic Violence Dying Eap Earth Day Empathy Employment Eric Klinenberg Ethics Exams Existential Failure Family Annihilation Founders Syndrome Francis Report Gay Cure Genocide George Lyward Goldman Sachs Good Death Greg Smith Grief Grieving Grooming Groupthink Happiness Hate Hungary Illness Interconnectedness Jason Mihalko Jubilee Kids Company Kitty Genovese Life Light Living Loneliness Love Mandatory Reporting Meaning Men Mental Health Mid Staffs Mindfulness Money Mothers New Year Nigella Lawson Optimism Organisational Collapse Oxford Abuse Panama Papers Panic Panic Attacks Parenthood Petruska Clarkson Pleasure Politics Positivity Post Natal Depression Power Priorities Priority Productivity Psychotherapy Ptsd Red Tent Reflection Rena Resilience Riots Rites Of Passage Ritual Robin Williams Sad Sales Savile Scared Seasonal Affective Disorder Self Care Self Preservation Self-preservation Shock Sin Singletons Sport Spring Status St David St Georges Day Stress Suarez Suicide Support Talking Terry Pratchett Time Transition Trauma True Self Truth Understanding Unemployment Valentines Day Viktor Frankl Violence Whistleblowing Who Am I Winter Blues Women Work Archives
January 2019
CategoriesAll Abandonment Abuse Ancestors Anger Anxiety Ash Wednesday Attitude Banking Bereavement Birthday Bravery Breivik Bystander Effect Camila Batmanghelidjh Carnival Cbt Challenger Charlotte Bevan Childbirth Childhood Children Christmas Coaching Compassion Contemplation Control Counselling Culture Dalai Lama Death Death Cafe Democracy Denial Depression Domestic Violence Dying Eap Earth Day Empathy Employment Eric Klinenberg Ethics Exams Existential Failure Family Annihilation Founders Syndrome Francis Report Gay Cure Genocide George Lyward Goldman Sachs Good Death Greg Smith Grief Grieving Grooming Groupthink Happiness Hate Hungary Illness Interconnectedness Jason Mihalko Jubilee Kids Company Kitty Genovese Life Light Living Loneliness Love Mandatory Reporting Meaning Men Mental Health Mid Staffs Mindfulness Money Mothers New Year Nigella Lawson Optimism Organisational Collapse Oxford Abuse Panama Papers Panic Panic Attacks Parenthood Petruska Clarkson Pleasure Politics Positivity Post Natal Depression Power Priorities Priority Productivity Psychotherapy Ptsd Red Tent Reflection Rena Resilience Riots Rites Of Passage Ritual Robin Williams Sad Sales Savile Scared Seasonal Affective Disorder Self Care Self Preservation Self-preservation Shock Sin Singletons Sport Spring Status St David St Georges Day Stress Suarez Suicide Support Talking Terry Pratchett Time Transition Trauma True Self Truth Understanding Unemployment Valentines Day Viktor Frankl Violence Whistleblowing Who Am I Winter Blues Women Work |
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