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If we scaled down our consumption, how would our Surroundings change?

Corporations own our hometowns

Corporations own our hometowns. They’ve eaten them. And because of this, our surroundings have dried up in inspiration and beauty, in the ability to touch our hearts with awe. They have become stale and ugly, with so much within them done in the cheapest and most efficient, scalable ways. If we were to begin consuming local, our cities would be sold back to us, and it would be up to us to make them exactly how we wanted them. Not only the businesses themselves and their properties, but everything impacted by how our businesses work, which is everything. Every detail will be subject to change, determined by us, those it is created by and for!

Take anything as an example and ask, how is it in comparison to what it could and should be? If we were in charge how would we make it better and truer to us?

Beauty, Inspiration, and the Spiritual

If we were calling the shots, would what we create not be more beautiful and inspiring, more in line with and respectful to nature, holy, spiritual, and timeless? Could our city not become as beautiful as Paris, our homes and small town as full of character as Brooklyn, our countrysides as charming and peaceful as England’s? Would our surroundings not be full of places with so much beauty they would almost be spiritual? Could our community not grow full of places with so much peace and beauty we would have moments of clarity during uncertainty? Where is our place to contemplate a big decision? We may have one now, but isn’t it by accident? What would one be like which was made intentionally with the will and backing of our entire community?

Romance

Would this beauty not be more romantic, causing spontaneous romantic interaction and continued romantic living? Romance has been dying. What has been the cause? What might be the solution? A beautiful environment to soften the heart, to take in with others may be a good start. Imagine a community so romantic, people fall in love spontaneously while out and about.

Slowing Down

Would our community and our lives we live within them not slow down, allowing us to take in and make more beautiful moments? We’re so rushed and addicted to efficiency that we don’t and we can’t nowadays. Isn’t this something we’d like to change? Don’t we want our roads to be as far as they can be from highways on the spectrum of transportation? Slower, smaller, all the way to the point they disappear? What would be the effect of changing all roads to 20 miles per hour? Wouldn’t our drives be more peaceful and intentional? Wouldn’t we be able to take in the beauty more so? Where there isn’t beauty, wouldn’t we be better able to see it so we could make it so? The slower the roads, the slower time moves. We’re less in habit, less unconscious. Even driving, something we think of as just a means to an end, could become memory making worthy. 2 lane roads, 20 mile per hour speed limits, roundabouts, police officers that walk and ride bicycles around communities rather than drive around in military-like armored vehicles.

Eliminating Drive Throughs

Continuing with this, if we want to maximize the beauty potential of all moments, wouldn’t we want to eliminate drive throughs? Wouldn’t the alternative, going inside to spend a moment with someone we know, who also knows us, having a conversation about our lives not be so much better? This may sound silly, but aren’t these “cheats” to get what we want and need faster not a source of social anxiety? People used to social interaction don’t have anxiety at the thought of interacting with people. It’s only those not used to it. We want people to enjoy social interaction. We want people to see and meet each other, not be afraid of them. We want to know the people we interact with on a day to day basis. Wouldn’t they more so with the surroundings that would come about if we began consuming locally?

Closer and More Connected

If things were to slow down, would things not become closer? And how much better would closer be? If you were sitting at a coffee shop, looking out the window, would you rather see a parking lot and road with cars driving about, or people walking by laughing and smiling and existing, where you’re able to “people watch,” take in their clothes and identities, able to run out and stop them for a conversation? In your daily life, would you rather see 500 people for 10 seconds each or 50 people 5 minutes each, twice a day? Would you rather a 10 minute drive or a 10 minute bike ride and 20 minute walk to all the things you want and need?

We need cars to get where we want and need to go because what we want and need isn’t close enough to take better forms of transportation. What if where we wanted and needed to go was within walking distance? How would our cities be organized if we no longer needed cars? We wouldn’t need a place to park them any longer. We wouldn’t need a place to drive them. Buildings and businesses would come together and become a beautiful town square. Parks would replace what parking lots and roads once were. Rather than one big supermarket serving one big city, now there would be multiple smaller locally owned grocery stores with items produced by those within. What would life be like? People walking, seeing each other, a community being reborn. It would slow us down. We'd be brought together. How good of a thing that would be.

The faster you can get from one place to another, the more efficient, the less there is sense of community. To slow down would show us how far away those we are supposed to share a community and destiny and will with actually are from us. Are how things organized now not built on falsity, lies and compromise? Do we not live more so in a corporation than a community? How many of us can walk to a park? How many of us can ride our bikes to a bakery for a sweet treat? How long does it take to get to your favorite restaurant? How long of a commute would work be if you could no longer take your car? With the new problems that would come, what solutions would we come up with? Are we so sure that the world we will have created after won’t be better than the one we have now? Bikes, walking, scooters, horses, trains and trolleys to other communities?

Climate Change & Voluntary Change

To those who believe in climate change, would the world created not be better in solving that problem? Wouldn’t we be doing everything we could to solve the problem? Wouldn’t those in other communities who also believe in it see us and model their behavior after us if they wanted to? To those who don’t believe in it, aren’t the other benefits of local consumption worth it, regardless of your belief here? And isn’t this way of being an example and inspiring others to voluntarily follow the way you believe in change happening, rather than top down force?

Emotional Safety & Expression

This also may sound silly, but we want to exist in places we feel comfortable to express ourselves truly. We want to smile and cry when we naturally feel to do so. We want to exist in a place where we don’t feel it necessary to repress truth within us. We want our community to be emotionally and mentally safe places. Would they not become so? We live in communities where we don't feel safe and capable of being truthful with the people we’re around. Would this not change? Necessary for this are people around us who know us, who relate to us, who understand us, and are there for us. We want our community to be a family. And it would be if we began to consume locally.

Clear Identity & Boundaries

Our community, with a clear identity, would come to have clearer boundaries of distinction. When one enters or exits our community, it would be clear they’re doing so. We want people from anywhere to see a picture of anywhere in our community, and know it’s our community.

If we scaled down our consumption, how would Politics change?

Solving Problems Locally

As we become better people, we would become more capable, both in our abilities and in our resources, to solve ourselves the many problems which presently exist in our community and throughout the world. Problems we presently have higher scaled attempted solutions to that we fund with taxes.

Many in the world of politics believe the solution to the many problems we face as communities is taxing those with what they see as excess resources and using the tax money to fund things to help those in need. If those who don’t share this opinion can lay down their emotions for a moment, this is a fair idea, and it’s not hard to see where they’re coming from. There are people with a tremendous amount of wealth, and there are people who are, to put it in a clear way, unhappy. There is no reason to believe these unhappy people will become happy if nothing is done, so something must be done. Let’s take a little bit of the money from those who have great quantities, and give it to those with little or none. At least it is a solution, right? And at least we are both united in the identification of a problem, because we all see people who are unhappy as a problem, right?

Reducing Wealth Inequality Through Local Consumption

There are many positive effects to the exclusive consumption of local. Any of them would be worthy to be the single motivator to consume locally, but I suspect this one will be the greatest for many.

If we were to begin to consume exclusively local, wouldn’t this both make the rich less rich to begin with, and would it not give those who lack happiness, happiness again? The answer is yes to both. If there is a problem with the rich being rich, rather than tax them, why not stop supporting them and making them rich to begin with? And if we were to stop, would not those who lack happiness because of the lack of excess resources throughout the members of a community not find themselves with more opportunity, money and happiness once again?

We do not need the rich to pay more in taxes to help those in need. We ought do what’s necessary so we can ourselves. We used to do it ourselves, and when that was the case we did it better than how it’s done now. We have not only outsourced our responsibility in work, we have outsourced our responsibilities in helping those in need. And in both cases, what we have now is less.

With full hierarchies belonging to our community, new opportunities would appear for those at the bottom. Would this solve the issues of every person in need? Maybe not, but with the new system, we would be better able with our resources and our abilities, and in our sense of duty to take care of those who still needed the care. And once we've helped all who need the help in our own communities, we could look to communities around us and help them should they want it and need it.

Wealth, Trust, and Fairness

In the system which comes about with all consuming exclusively locally, there will still be people with more than others. But even if that’s the case, that can still be right. That doesn’t mean there’s evil to be fixed. We can still live in a community where truth is present, where there's no lies, no deception, and some people still get more than others. If you don’t agree, isn’t a tremendous scaling down of the inequality still a good place to start?

Those with the most money will be those who really deserve it, and everyone will agree, because more than ever, it will be each individual responsible for their wealth.

Will we come to have greater trust in our surroundings and realities, trusting people are getting what they deserve, and for all to deserve something good.

We will be able to lay this long divisive issue to the side. Mark it off on the to do list. We will find ourselves a little more able to lay down our wills and just live and have nature happen to us rather than us happen to nature. There will be bad guys who attempt to go further than what’s right, people who try to use their will over others, and that will require our will to put them down, but we will prevail.

We will have rediscovered an old American truth- that generosity, compassion, sympathy, and love can not just exist, but it can flourish in freedom.

Better Leaders from Better Communities

It’s strange to realize elected officials come from communities. Some from large communities and some from communities not our own, but communities nonetheless. It’s already been discussed how if we were to scale down our consumption, we would become a better people. Taking this further, we would get better leaders. Leaders worthy of being looked up to and admired. Leaders that would be a better example for both our kids, and for ourselves than the ones which presently exist. And these leaders would become the clear choice to represent us in the government.

Politics has devolved into a game. A game that bad people are best at playing. How do we fix it? Consume locally, reduce the hierarchies of power and responsibility entirely back to localities, see who the good people are with their new opportunity, and after they’ve proven themselves to do the right thing here, send them to the next level, where they will have an opportunity they deserve to continue doing right.

No more politicking and calculation. No picking and choosing based on who we think will beat who. No deceiving. No hate. No electing people who say they care, yet spend billions getting into those positions.

Simpler, quieter. It would return to the back of our minds because we’d all come to see the truth whose lack has caused our present division. The conflict which surrounds us would disappear. There would be no more lawsuits. Not because you couldn’t file one, but because you’d never need to. Simple handshakes and people’s words would take the place of legal contracts.

If we scaled down our consumption, how would People change?

With large scale businesses failing, they’d leave, and should we still want the things they once sold, the people within our community, people we know, love, and care for would have as big of an opportunity as they could to take action on their curiosities, passions, and dreams.

The experience of work would become totally new. Within the businesses that exist now, the hearts and the souls, the individuality and the creativity of the people are not present. This is because they’re not necessary or valuable. Not only this, but they’re a barrier to the ability of the individual to execute the decisions made by those far above and far away. The significance of the problems caused by this, and the significance of the effects of solving this problem are of the largest magnitude, impacting all details of our lives.

No longer would our work environments be a fake group of people who don’t deeply know each other just following orders together. The politics and the fear of HR would evaporate, and left would be a family of people who truly cared for, loved, and respected each other, with the responsibility and ability of doing what they believe is right, which if it’s not, has in this local scale the greatest potential of getting fixed as fast as possible and with the least amount of hurting more people than it should. (Amen, Conservatives?)

Owners, now completely free and responsible to do what they believe best, experience the greatest rush of freedom allowing their long suppressed creativity and abilities to shine. The employees, now directly in front of the owner, have the same rush of freedom and opportunity, coming from the new truth they can make a positive difference if they’re capable.

Work as a Massive Part of Life

Work, both our own and the work of others, is a massive part of our life, isn’t it? Is not a majority of lives working and consuming the work of others? A change so dramatic to something so fundamental in our lives would change our lives. It would change who we are.

Would we not become a better people?

There is a correlation with one’s ownership in something and their care for it. More ownership, more attention to detail, more feeling of duty and responsibility to maintain and improve quality. This is undeniable, yet we’ve allowed such reduction in ownership by average people. We have become the renters of our lives, the renters of our realities. We have been sold convenience rather than learning to find joy in doing things we ought be responsible for. There is benefit to having others think and act so you don’t have to - ease. But the negatives infinitely outweigh them. We get a less accurate representation of our hearts, of what we would’ve made if we were the decision makers. There’s also danger in it. When you outsource ownership, (decision making) you give power to a system of people who may not always be worthy of it, and who may use it incorrectly. This is a risk that America was founded on saying no to. The effect of returning power to the masses from the concentrated few, would be a tremendous good.

With great power, comes great responsibility. This cliche exists for a reason. It’s true. With the power now back in our hands, in order to succeed, we would need to become better, wiser, more honorable, capable, trustworthy people. Today we consume from places that are highly scaled and decisions that should be ours are not. They belong to people in the cities where the corporations are headquartered. We are simply managers. We are the soldiers following the orders of the generals. To delete these people from the hierarchy, and give the decision making to us, we would need to be better, more capable of discernment and of doing what is right, and knowing why what’s right is right. How significant this would be, as it would impact more than our lives at work, but all parts of our lives.

We would find the benefits of doing right returning. No longer in our lives do the benefits that are supposed to come from doing the right things exist. In the past, when one went to the bank to get a loan, how they dressed had impact on the quality of the loan they got, or whether they got a loan at all. Not anymore. Now, regardless of suit or sweatpants, numbers are put into a computer and calculated by an algorithm not taking into account truer and better pieces of information that could and should be, things only knowable at the local level - their smile, their reputation, their family, their story, their involvement in the community, how they’ve presented themself for this important ask. Things are strange now. Is the right thing still to present yourself well to those you’re asking something from, when those you’re asking from are no longer the ones really making the decision, when they themselves would wear sweatpants if they didn’t have a dress code telling them they cannot. Is the system now not deception and rules and lies?

To summarize, the greater ones ownership in something (and the closer one is to the ownership of something) the greater the love, care, pride, obsession and responsibility one has for the work being done, the more love and gratitude they have for the customers their creations are for, the more hope for their future and their ability to rise to the top, the more incentive to become a better person, more importance to the story of the business, and community and world that they are part of.

Would there not be more meaning and beauty in the things we consume?

When someone asks about a piece of art in your home, a piece of furniture, or your outfit, more than ever we say we found it at TJ Maxx or on Amazon. This is something we take pride in, but should we when the alternative is sharing with the person asking the story of a local person who imagined and created it, how their family has been doing so for generations, where they gathered the materials from, and how you yourself put in custom requests for specific details?

In the same way a drawing on the wall made by a son or daughter makes a parent smile more than a copy pasted, mass produced image, if we scaled down our consumption in all genres, wouldn’t there be more happiness and meaning in our daily lives with everything surrounding us having a beautiful story? Wouldn’t everything all feel more true? Whether it’s the artwork which hangs in our walls, the cups we drink our coffee out of, the plates we eat off of, if it was made more locally, it would be better.

Wouldn’t we find ourselves with greater peace, intention, and inspiration within the rooms we exist within, created by a relationship with each of the pieces within each room.

Wouldn’t our possessions become so special that they would be worthy of passing down to the next generation when our time was coming to an end? This tradition has become mostly a cliche. Wouldn’t the return of meaning and quality in our consumption have this old tradition return?

Would our things not become more worthy of maintaining rather than replacing? And wouldn’t we find ourselves with lower quantities of high quality items rather than what we have now, high quantities of low quality things? Would both of these not be great steps in solving the problem of sustainability talked about so much?

We need to remember what exactly the purpose of the stuff that we consume is. At its core, is it not to make us better creators ourselves? The answer is yes. And we’ve completely forgotten this, as evidenced by the many low quality, low meaning things we consume which by definition make us lower quality creators.

Would we not become a healthier people?

Along with the new true reasons to be healthier, wouldn’t we naturally just become more so by consuming only locally produced food? If we were only consuming food which came from our own community, would we not be consuming more real food, less fake, processed, and unhealthy food? If we began to consume local, would the entertainment and things we spend our free time doing not be more active, making us move more? There wouldn’t need to be “health food” grocery stores. We wouldn’t need vitamin shops. What we would already be consuming would have everything we need. We won’t need to supplement - we’ll already have what we need - and every store will naturally be healthy. To go a little deeper, is not Kroger and Whole Foods evidence of a two tiered society?

Read more: Food as Culture by Michael Pollan

Wouldn’t the process of going shopping be so much more enjoyable?

This may be silly, but there’s a scene in John Wick where John goes shopping. The guy working there, helping him actually knows what he's talking about. He says, “I can wholeheartedly endorse a specific item”. How would we react if anybody in our modern consumption environment said this? Would we not raise an eyebrow and chuckle? Why is this? Nobody is so deep in their work that they can say this truly, and we the consumers know this. They can’t believe in something they don’t know, that they had no influence over.

This would change. And how awesome that change would be. In the same way we have no good answer for the people who ask us about our possessions, those who presently sell us our possessions have no answers to our questions. Imagine walking into an art gallery and being able to ask any question about the artist, how they made it, what the style of art is called, where they painted it, what their story is. Imagine walking into a furniture store and being able to learn about what region the wood that made that exact piece came from, the people who cut it down, the person who made it, and how long they’ve been doing it. Imagine if the creator was there in the store, able to answer any curiosities you may have. Imagine how curious you could again become, with the best source of answer right in front of you. Imagine how exciting daily life would be with a community full of these experts in their craft, all around you able to be asked anything on your mind. Imagine walking into a restaurant and having the people responsible for every detail of the experience within the restaurant with you, again, allowing you to ask anything!

If we were to begin consuming local, the options we would find ourselves with would be higher quality. There is no doubt they would increase in price, but doesn’t this too increase the excitement of shopping? How much more special are things you had to save for? How much more excited are you throughout your day when you have a goal you’re getting closer and closer to achieving? How much better do you take care of them once you do?

We need to realize we have prioritized speed and cost over love and quality, and that we are worse for it.

The other side of this is those working

Would we not, not in spite of work, but because of it, become more alive, inspired, happy and motivated? In our present consumption environment, there is no love, pride, or art in things sold. Rather than us being involved in their creation, they are handed down to us to sell. This makes us interchangeable and makes any skills we have deeper than selling, organizing, and restocking not relevant or necessary to the success of the business.

Here’s how to think about it - if suddenly, all shipments to TJ Maxx were to freeze, and the employees of TJ Maxx were to create what they sell, what would happen? A great sense of anxiety at first, yes, but then what? Motivated action towards the learning and mastery of creating the products sold. Quickly there would be a great pride in their creations, and a desire to share with customers how the item was created and why. Customers would become more than ever, appreciative and respectful, grateful for the time and effort put into something the customer will make a deep part of their life.

Would the prices be higher? Yes! But wouldn’t this be worth it? Yes!

More than ever, people are empty and lost. They lack meaning and purpose. The negatives of this lack of reason to be our best is evident in much of our behavior - sadness, depression, unhealthy decisions for the body and mind like eating poorly and filling our boredom with distraction. It’s also the other side of emotions - false pride, greed, and vanity. All of these things are separation from true happiness, happiness that would grow and forever blossom should we just consume locally. We need a true and good reason to reset our lives to go towards this true happiness. We need a new hope to motivate change in behavior and lives. Would this not be it?

Just think. Rather than something printed a million times by a machine in China, then sent to every TJ Maxx throughout the United States, you will be on a walk at the park and see someone with an easel, painting, and buy it!

Would the prices be higher? Yes! But wouldn’t this be worth it? Yes!

This with every genre of consumption. Every genre of work full of creativity and imagination, passion and obsession, excitement, inspiration, duty and pride. Do you see it?

Would we not learn better who we are, making us truer, and more confident?

Every genre of consumption and creation is an art, an art worthy of a hearts full efforts. The scaling down of our consumption would create as great a quantity of opportunities as possible for every member of the community to find what it is they’re curious about and inclined towards and pursue it. Each of us more able to be the artist of our realities, and creators rather than takers, we would get to know ourselves more deeply, see what we believe and yearn for, and have the opportunity to bring it to live.

Confidence is not something one chooses to be. It is the natural effect of knowing what one believes, knowing what one wants, and believing in their capability to achieve it. No way makes this more possible than the environment that comes about when all consume strictly local.

To be alive is to have an answer for why everything is the way it is in your reality. It’s to never be asked a question about your life and have to think about it, but to always know who you are and why you are who you are. If we were to begin consuming locally once again, would this not be the case once again?

Before we knew how habits were formed, did people form habits? Of course, but they came about naturally. Naturally meaning the want which caused the habit to succeed in taking root was strong enough to sustain the work needed to create the habit. But now that we know how habits are formed, we artificially try to create them when they wouldn’t have come about naturally. We force upon ourselves and suffer through the work which should be natural, and because of this we’re not becoming who we’re meant to be. We’re lying ourself into someone false. No longer will this be the case. No longer will there be attempts at becoming someone for any reason other than we are meant to be that! Our surroundings will be full of opportunity to find and fully pursue to the depths who we are. Habits that are meant to stick, will automatically stick, and no longer will there be failing, guilt, or shame. Just excitement and hope as we discover who we are, and become that person more. No longer will there by lying, both to others and to ourselves in this regard. In a community consuming locally, it will be difficult, not as it is now, to succeed at hiding your true colors, but difficult to hide your true self.

The average person today stands out for being happy. We want the opposite. And with all the happiness that would come, they would.

Would this not make us more courageous? More hopeful? Less fearful and worried? More adventurous? More inclined to risk taking? More capable of following your dreams and heart? More willing to stand up for what you believe in?

Yes. We will no longer be afraid of failure. No longer will anything take away our hope. No longer will we wake up and feel depression at the day ahead of us. In our mornings we will begin to go “Oh, I’m actually excited!”

Would we not find ourselves full of gratitude?

Would we not better see our connection to the story of humanity? And would we not have a more proper perspective in regard to the miracle of our existence.

Techno-Humanist Manifesto - Chapter 1

Would we not always have something in the future we’re looking forward to?

In a community full of people fully pursuing their truest dreams, wouldn’t we all be full of excitement for the future? Our own futures, the futures of those we care for, the future of businesses and groups striving for things we care for, and the future of our surroundings?

Taken to the extreme, would every moment of every day not be worthy of excitement? This would be peace, no longer looking into the future with excitement or worry, but getting lost in our present because our present is so good it’s worthy of our full presence.

Wouldn’t we be more able to trust that where we were is where we were meant to be?

In other words, wouldn’t we be able to let go a bit, allow for the workings of fate, spontaneity and destiny to shape our lives? If you don't believe it is your destiny to be where you are, then why are you there? The modern answers are money, pride, and fear. This is to compromise, to lie to yourself, by choosing something that you believe worthy of disobeying destiny for. Who are you to disobey destiny, a cosmic plan bigger than you, a plan that has you being all you can be?

A world where everybody believes they are truly where they should be, or are heading in the right direction, is a world with no insecurity. It’s a world where someone can put in all the effort they can and are rightfully proud of where they end up. The goal is not a world where anyone can get to the top with enough work. Rather, the goal is a world where the person who should get to the top does get to the top. And the best way for this to happen is to follow your heart and trust, best (and perhaps only) possible in a system which consumes locally.

We must remember destiny. We must live our lives and go with the adventure that comes. Culture has developed a pressure to make as much money as you can. Look at the world which has come about. The infinite conquest of global completion. To those people obsessed and motivated by money, chill out. Ask, What do you love? Answer, What would you do if money was not important? Then do it. And realize that it’s worth it. Your one life.

Wouldn’t our lives and the stories which make them up become better than the fake ones we consume?

We've become spectators to those who truly live. On social media, we watch people build things, cook, make things, and have fun. On reality tv we watch people renovate homes. On streaming platforms we watch people play video games. It seems we no longer enjoy the things we do when we're not spectating. We believe more in the dreams of fictional characters than our own and in the real ones of others right in front of us. Isn’t this wrong? Isn’t this worth inspecting and correcting? Don't you want a life that a book could be written about? Don't we each want to have a love story worthy of a bestselling novel? Don’t we each want to have a conquest stories? We each need to ask ourselves, what story do we want to tell? The answer is yes to these questions, but the answer is also no, because we now are wise enough to see this would mean those who watch and read it are taking away from their lives.

Would we not become a truer community, more so united towards greatness and pursuing shared goals together?

Would we not have higher quality families, friends, and friendships?

Where do family members get to know each other? In President Reagan's farewell address, he said it was at the dinner table. Never have we as a community (and nation) had regular family dinners so little. Does this mean family members know each other less? You better believe it. We have more problems now as individuals than ever. No wonder! We no longer have a family full of people we know, and who know us. If we don’t know our family, how can we respect or trust them? How can we value their opinion when their opinion won’t be as accurate to what we need given their lack of understanding about us? How can they love us, when they don’t know us? We’re told therapy is the answer, but shouldn’t it be family? It used to be, and when it was, things were better. Just another instance of our consumption being outsourced to greater and greater scales - this time, wisdom. That should be terrifying to all. Scale down consumption, rebuild family.

Scaling down our consumption would also result in the return of beautiful, high quality non-family relationships in our lives. A community full of people you see every day who know you and care for you deeply, and who you know and care deeply for. How much better a community this would be. One where you know the dreams of those around you, and have the ability to help them. One where you recognize when something is wrong in someone you care for, and can help them. One where there’s people who will do that for you. One where people credit you for their success in the pursuit of their dreams. One where you can be true and yourself, never fake or a different person than you were in an earlier moment, where you don’t have to hide. One full of empathy, coming from understanding people and their flaws and how that makes them who they are. People do what they do for reasons good or bad. Go explore them. Go become their friend. Go take an interest in that person, and help them. Take a deeper interest in people. Not just what naturally comes up in conversation, but what they are currently yearning for. What they currently want.

Greed and ambition are natural in a community where consumption is scaled high. To scale it down would result in a community where instead, you love thy neighbor. How far down your street do you need to go to be surprised if you woke up one morning and unexpectedly saw a for sale sign in their yard? Shouldn't anyone in a community leaving be a sad surprise? Shouldn’t you have been involved in their decision? Shouldn't they have told you or confessed to you earlier? So you can plan your last bit of time together?

Another silly mention. In Season 4, Episode 6 of Stranger Things, Nancy asked Robin, “does that make us officially friends now?” Becoming friends used to be a ceremony! People of the past used to take seriously the moments where friendship became official. We’ve lost this. We don’t say things like this anymore. We’ve become so abstract. We’ve lost our intentionality in the things which matter most. There’s so much ambiguity. We don’t know why we’re doing what we’re doing.

We need to get to know the people we interact with, and help them achieve their goals, help maximize the probability that they do something good with their life. We need people in our lives who do this for us. We need people in our lives who believe us when we’re telling the truth when we need them to believe us. We as a community need to share these people.

Wouldn’t our devices fade away?

We want our community and our lives to be so entertaining and beautiful that boredom eliminating devices become obsolete, and in their gaps, there would be the return of our own stories, filled with relationships, art, experiences, creating, and our work.

We want our lives to be filled with such great natural inputs we don't want or need artificial input. This happens as much as one consumes locally. Social media, and screens are artificial input. What’s seen on them is not real. It's not reality. Seeing your friend got married is less real than going to get coffee with your friend and learning about it there. There's less depth to it. There's less beauty in it. There's less excitement about it. It's less real.

Our distraction devices make people less receptive to things which would make them truly joyful. When people are less receptive to joyful things, the world stops being rewarded for creating those moments. The creation of joy, isn’t that what capitalism was supposed to be? Where has it gone wrong? Scale.

A phone is an electric shock collar for humans in the sense it takes you out of your presence. There is a better metaphor, one a little lost to time, and that is a whistle. In the same way a whistle was used to tell people to get out of the trenches and go run and fight in WW1, it's something that stops you from living. Every single moment of your reality should be so good that you don't want it to be interrupted, yet we carry around phones which do exactly that. They blind us to the beauty of the real world.

We need to replace the digital world with the physical world. There is a phrase in the “startup community,” the community that has produced all of the websites and technology we now use everyday - “the internet is eating the world”. This site, radius, ought be the final bite it takes, that allows we the people the ability have the internet spit it all out for us to continue where we left off. And when we’re done, this website will be the final thing spit.

Would we not have pride in our lives, leading to a most proper death?

We want to live and die without regrets. Would the community that came about if we decided to consume local not lead to an end of life with this true?

If we scaled down our consumption, how would our Businesses change?

Would our businesses not more closely match and answer the hearts of those in our community?

Businesses within a community are an expression of the will of the people within that community. Every business is a piece of the answer to the question, What do the people within the community want, need, and believe?

When a community has within it businesses which other communities also have, what does that mean? To borrow some words from the political world, it means those communities lack a unique culture and lack diversity from other communities. And to use a less political idea, it means the individuality of the people within that community is not active.

If a community was to remove from their answer all businesses which they share with other communities, and replace them with what it is they exactly wanted, what would they come up with? The answer will always be something that more closely matches the hearts of the people within. And this, will always be a good and better thing.

Unity of Community

In the same way two family members are more likely to share wants, needs, and beliefs than two random, unrelated people, and in the same way two Americans are more likely to share these things than an American and a non American, two people within a community are more likely to share wants, needs, and beliefs than two people from different communities.

What this “unity of community” should lead to is less, or perhaps just one option for each want and need there is within a community.

Think about it - if everyone within a community shares core beliefs and preferences, how are there so many options for each business genre? The answer is generalization. For a business to succeed in selling a product to two different peoples, the business must generalize. They must strip away all unique details, culture, things exclusive to each of the peoples. Whether they realize it or not, they ask then say to themselves, If each community was to make their own, what would they all have in common? Let’s make that! This is why they succeed, but again, what we get is less than what we’d be creating if we were creating.

It’s true and we shouldn’t be surprised that today we don’t feel that those in our communities are similar to us, that we are united with each other, but is this not because we lack things which remind us of what unites us? Is it not because we lack the opportunity to come together and decide what we all want, uniting us in the process? I think yes.

A Reduction in Choice

If we were to consume locally, our businesses would come to represent our hearts, our will, and our beliefs as much as they could. Given that we share in these things in large part with our community, the many generalized choices, would be reduced to few specific choices true to the people within it.

A reduction in choice is something we’re suspicious of. The word monopoly and its negative associations comes to mind. These opinions are correct. Why, but for the reasons already stated - they take away the opportunity for smaller sets of people to succeed in creating something different that they want more. We must remember that our negative opinions of monopolies belong only to monopolies at national and global scales. A local monopoly is quite different. It’s the opposite, in fact. If a bad monopoly is one for all, a local monopoly is one for each. And one for each, is the best that can be.

Competition and Its End

The system our businesses exist within is competition. What is a competition but a system to determine a winner? In this “competition,” things are actually quite stable. It seems we’ve reached the end of the competition, or rather, a point of endless competition without a winner. Are we happy with what surrounds us? If this is the end, if this is what we will have forever serving our wants and needs, are we happy? I think no.

What would have us the happiest is a clear and obvious choice for each of our wants and needs, determined and created by us, the people it is directly serving, with no influence by those who need to generalize and take away the us within.

Advertisements

Advertisements are strategy in the game of competition. Their great presence in our modern world implies we aren’t firm in our beliefs, our wants, or our opinion of what’s best or what’s the obvious choice. If our consumption habits changed, and rather than many equally wrong and generalized businesses, a few businesses we consume our wants and needs from became obvious, if the competition came to an end, what need would there be for advertisements? There wouldn’t be any, and they would go away. The next generation would ask, What’s an ad? What would remain? The truth of nature. Learning about businesses and what they offer in the best way possible - fate, spontaneity, and those who know us best - friends who tell us about it, and family who gift it to us.

We need to see advertising for what it is - unnatural, attacks on nature that make us believe we want and need things we don't by creating doubt in and forgetfulness of our natural beliefs at all levels of priorities.

Higher Quality, Love, and Intention

It’s hard to predict the future, which is what this is, but generally we can say a couple things if we began consuming locally. We can assume confidently that the things our local businesses would create would become, as much as they could, higher quality, full of love, timeless and truthful.

We have forgotten, or simply no longer believe, that everything a business creates and does can be art. In all things there can be intention, truth, a story, love, style. Take a look at things from the past - lighters, pens, homes, banks, elevators, desks, street lamps, clothing… anything! - and compare them to their modern equivalents. Everything modern is a facade and imitation of a higher quality original. Everything in our present environment is lower quality versions of what was once great. Why? The scale of the businesses which serve us was raised, necessitating generalization. Cheaper ways to achieve the same result were pursued, ways without the art, without the love, without the soul and intention. Were these things cheaper, more efficient, and quicker to get? Yes. But are these the variables we ought prioritize? Look at where and what they got us. The love, care and intention behind and within all is gone. Evaporated. Forgotten.

We ought want the things in our lives to not be efficient. Things slow, beautiful, intentional, with presence where you want to take it all in without being rushed and in habit. What would we be willing to do in order to have every single thing that we consume, have the most love within it? What would that take from us? Isn't that a question worth answering? And if it's possible, isn't that a reality worth bringing about? It's valid to ask what the effects would be, but in every possible way, in every possible genre, every single effect is a positive one. And every sacrifice necessary, one worth it.

Time to Change the Winners

We've allowed the winners of the game that's played for our money to be people and businesses it shouldn't be. It’s time to change this, and bring about better.