Living in Peace and Wisdom on our Planet

The story so far:

Reporter Max Wahlter has visited  the sustainable city of Porena (see earlier chapters). It seems it IS possible - even preferable - to live sustainably without working. Yeah but where do you get all the food to eat many will ask. "You grow it" is the answer.

This week: Max finds a way to travel ecologically, grills a family on where food comes from, gets close up to a new kind of architecture and muses on Maslow.

Journey four: Grow Food Everywhere

Prologue
Strangely enough, even though I have not actively worked with Porena recently, it has been working with me - a lot of things have fallen into place.

For example, looking back over what has happened I see I was encouraged to ask specific questions. Whatever the question was, it got answered. Often with a surprising answer. If it wasn't surprising it probably wasn't coming from the right place.

On the other hand I am still not any closer to 'bringing back' my sustainable, money-making invention. 

Tapescript

To today's question.  Explain more about how growing food everywhere works.

Large beige - coloured tiles make up the floor of the entrance hall. It seems to be a long way to the entrance area.  I walk toward a bench with what appears to be rubber plants growing behind it.

I sit down on this shiny, highly varnished wooden seat and look around. Seeing a moving pavement, with a PORENA sign over it, I walk over and get on it. At the end, steps lead down to a flat, wide open space looking like a construction site.

Coming out into the sunshine I see a large, round aircraft, like a flying saucer. Metallic, round and shiny sitting on legs. Steps lead up to the door under a PORENA TRAVELS sign. People are sitting in a circle, in comfortable seats. I join them. I guess the craft is getting ready to leave.

'Where am I?'

'This is the Library.'

I see no books, maybe there is an electronic thing to... 

'It's in the chairs, what you need comes to you.'

There a few magazines around, I pick one up from the gap between the chairs. PORENA library. This seems to be an instruction booklet cum magazine for the library. A picture of the library itself. People walking in to it. The latest news is a multiplicity screen on the roof, whatever that is. I turn to the section marked multiplicity. A cross between a book and an etch-a-sketch shows up, with instructions to 'hone in on what you want' using the knobs.

Finding it hard to concentrate and take it all in, I flip to the next page, an article about walking and then about growing plants, featuring the seed trays and cassettes I saw in the kiosk. It's all here, I'm on my way.

The urge to explore further takes me up the stairs, and it's not a library I see but some kind of control room. Knobs and dials everywhere – I could swear I was on a flying saucer.
Slipping into the pilot's chair in the middle of all these controls, I see 'Porena' on the center of the screen.

You cannot just get into a flying saucer, which is also a library and fly it. Or can you? Looking at these controls it hits me. The most ecological machines are the ones that you cannot do any damage with. Ones that are failsafe. Completely. Like they are talking about controlling cars on the motorway, and letting the driver relax.

This one does the thinking for you. A guy come up behind me and, following his encouraging remarks, I push the lever to my right. The doors close, and very slowly and gracefully we take off in the direction of Porena.

We're flying low and slowly over fields of what looks like bamboo or another fast-growing energy crop. I get the idea it's for energy anyhow- green oil. I walk back down the stairs and start to engage passengers (is that what library visitors are?) in conversation.

I ask: 'Is there anybody who would like to show me how you grow food everywhere?'

I get invited home. After landing we walk to the housing area. The houses, or maisonettes, are built in wide circles. They are cream coloured with tile roofing. My host shows me the wheat grass on the balcony. The corn etc, all grown in what appears to be ordinary potting soil.

Here's what I got out of the interview. They don't have to grow food at home, because everybody grows food everywhere. The cassettes I asked about contain cotton wool and start seedlings off, they can replant them on the balcony or in the area outside. This family has a skylight in the roof to let in natural light, and they put some plants under that. Artificial light is not ecological and is not used.

I asked about composting and for that I needed to go outside. On the southern side of the maisonette the front doors open out onto a glazed-in section, rather like a conservatory. Here, the heat from the sun warms the air, providing insulation and extra heating for the houses as well as a growing area.

This is communal and tended by everybody. The principle is permaculture. That is to say a plant and leave concept, bearing fruit and nuts annually requiring the minimum of tending.

I have to ask: 'How can you get along as neighbours, all helping out? Surely someone will slack!'

The explanation comes back; 'Everyone helps out as they understand it is in their own interest.'
In the glassed area they grow green peppers, corn, sweet potatoes and tobacco for medicinal purposes. Tobacco is decorative too.

Outside, towards the centre of the area, they have the composting machine.  It looks like a large black cauldron. They dry the organic matter first, using heat from the sun, before it crumbles into a kind of powder to be put back onto the soil.  Another thing, all buildings are designed with growing in mind. Horti-architecture. Cool name, huh?

I return to the craft, push a button labeled 'Return', the door closes and we hover off.

Regular readers will remember that in the sustainable society of PORENA, a lot of work was done to understand what they called the five stresses.

The theory was that there are limits in all these areas, and exceeding them is deleterious to human health. That is to say, it puts a stress on the human organism that the human cannot resist for a long time without a breakdown in health. The clearer these limits are understood, the better work, buildings, society, production, etc. can be designed.

There's more. If you could reduce stress levels in these areas, you would achieve a change in behaviour. There would be a rapid reduction in destructive behaviour, and consequently in the sustainability-reducing effects of this behaviour.
This could be actually what Maslow wanted to say with his hierarchy model. This model is a sustainability promoting invention. Psychology could contribute to development by illuminating how these basic needs could be met. By doing what it could to reduce these stresses, society would reduce destructive behaviour.
 
We have to find ways to side-step this gigantic supply chain using up energy and spewing out waste, that in our (the consumer's) name is 'helping us fulfil ourselves'.

To enjoy your life, to fulfil yourself does not have anything to do with what you work with. You work primarily to keep life supported. The first two Maslow steps.  Then, the other steps should be accomplishable with the minimum of consumption of energy and resources.

Next week:    Under the sustainable city of Porena lies an advanced transport system. Max digs deep to reveal its inner workings.

Read more on http://stephenhinton.avbp.net