Vancouver Area Relocalisation Network

I said it in my first blog entry, and I'm going to say it again: people, read Small Is Beautiful by E.F. Schumacher! One of the key concepts to come out of this work is that of "appropriate technology." The idea behind appropriate technology is that by making use of technologies that give proper consideration to the natural, social, and cultural capital of the community for which they are intended, natural resources, energy, and human dignity can be spared. For instance, most developing nations have a dearth of reliable energy, but a whole lot of man-power (i.e. population), so why not put people to work achieving object X instead of wasting valuable energy on a high-tech solution that leaves people sitting around feeling useless?

I'm bringing this up because the most recent post on my new favorite blog, Homegrown Evolution, features a simple, outdoor "rocket stove" as a starting point for a discussion of appropriate technology in the West. Usually targeted at the development of poor, third-world nations (as Schumacher lays out), their point is that low-tech-nologies can, and should, play a role in western societies too.

I have thought for years that we make too much use of convenient, but wasteful technologies here in the West. We have a gadget for everything but none have more than a single purpose--and then you have to buy another one when the first one breaks because its nothing more than cheap crap because it's made in an Asian "Special Economic Zone," or some such place with bargain-basement taxes. I ask you: Is an electric can-opener really any more more convenient than a manual one? Seems a pretty wasteful re-invention of the wheel, if you ask me. Ever seen a morbidly-obese person use an elevator to go up or--even worse--down a single flight of stairs? I bet you have and I bet you didn't wonder how they got that way. Even with a stroller, I don't bother with automatic doors; it may be cumbersome for me to hold the door with one hand and push my stroller through with the other, but I'd rather not make senseless use of electricity when I have four functioning limbs of my own and plenty of calories to burn.

Really, you can think of calories as the medium of exchange whenever energy is being used--whether it comes from a power plant or your own muscles, and your own muscles are always going to be more efficient because there's no intermediary uses of energy from production to use, as is the case when transmission lines and middlemen are used. Which is more energy efficient: taking twenty-or-so steps to get to the second floor of a building, or relying on the century's worth of human ingenuity, research, and manufacturing that went into the completion of the modern elevator (not to mention the electricity to operate it unnecessarily). How are the two even comparable? Because every person that took part in the design and building of the elevator ultimately got paid in calories: dollars, yes, but dollars are only valuable as a means to an end and everyone's ultimate aim is to feed themselves. (more on the natural origins of the economy another time)

Why, in the grossly-obese West, do we sit back and let machines do the littlest things for us, things that we are perfectly capable of doing for ourselves? Not only do we infantilize ourselves by presuming to be so incapable, we lose out on innumerable opportunities to exercise, i.e. for our bodies to perform some much-needed metabolism and burn some calories. It's always been a wonder to me that people are content to sit on their butts all day--from home to car to office on their butts--and then waste an hour in the gym every night when they could've just gotten a little exercise here and a little exercise there throughout the day had they walked, biked, and done things manually.

Doing things by your own power rather than farming out your body's metabolic functions to power plants and gizmos, seems to me the ultimate instance of relocalization. Why? Because performing a given action with the use of appropriate technology makes the most efficient use of energy, in calories, decreases reliance on external inputs of energy and resources, and increases reliance on others in the community. And the three, taken together, resonate nicely with relocalization as I see it.

Next on my list of books to read: Slow Is Beautiful.