I didn’t know this was a thing but I did something like this last year.

Last winter I gathered a bunch of leaves from the tree in the front yard and covered up all the garden bed with leaves. I was hoping the leaf layer would protect the soil surface from the cold and snow during the winter. Since the leaves are so thin, they broke down really quickly in the spring time when it started to warm up.

I plan on doing the same this year as well.

I also have a spot in my garden I just add compost waste. It’s just a pile of food scraps and trimmings from my garden. I’m too lazy for any other composting options. I’ll just spread that area around the rest of the garden next spring.

I appreciate the suggestions but this brings up another issue that I have had with these types of conversations. Far too many of the people I’ve spoken to live in a constant state of hypocrisy or contradiction.

It’s going to be hard for me to fully explain this as I just don’t have the energy to deal with people anymore and have chosen to keep in contact with very few people over the past few years. That is to say, my contact with people in general has been somewhat limited.

It does somewhat go back to my points about defensiveness and defending peoples and systems that are oppressive. On many occasion, explaining certain hypocrisies as simply and clearly to the best of my efforts was still seen as an attack on themselves. The simple suggestion that change for all requires change on a personal level was unthinkable for them.

Even though capitalism is causing so much unhappiness in their lives, they want it to stay because it seems to me that it brings them a sort of comfort through habit or routine. Disrupting what brings their vision of comfort is scary and so they react in hostility.

I say all this through my experience of fighting for the right to be treated with dignity in a workplace that was crumbling under it’s own weight of sexism, racism, classism and ageism. Where it was important to have as many people be supportive of what I was fighting for so we could all benefit together. What I received was constant shame and belittlement for opposing authority alongside praises for opposing authority. From the same people. Does that make sense? Not to me.

Humans are complex. Far too complex for me to even attempt to explain how complex they can be. Unfortunately, I just no longer have the energy or patience to continue. Especially as a person of colour in a small conservative town.

Both points are very valid. I have had a difficult time trying to approach the topic of alternatives to capitalism with other people.

I try to speak to them in language that they would understand. I also try to speak to them in a way that would empathise with them. I am very careful with my words because I do not want to accidentally or directly attack them and cause a defensive response. Once someone becomes defensive, they are more likely to reject what’s being said to them and become hostile towards me and my lifestyle.

The most common issue I have in these conversations is that the other person I’m talking to appears to be unable to imagine another life without capitalism. All their problem solving skills heavily rely on buying more. Their long term goals center around accumulating wealth. The people they look up to and attempt to follow are all wealth hoarders.

I don’t expect to be able to deprogram anyone from the constant propaganda produced by capitalism. It does sadden me though. The people that I talked to are just not curious about any alternatives and would rather defend a lifestyle and the systems that oppresses their very own happiness and freedom to be themselves. These conversations exhaust me and now I’m just too low on energy to have the motivation to try anymore.

I do hope to one day see the start of change. Where common people finally understand just how hilariously outnumbered wealth hoarders are and begin to work together to rebuild communities that reject and fight against such oppressive peoples and systems.

Unfortunately without much support, especially from any local community, it’s hard to even approach this issue.

I used to work in automation and it’s amazing how much waste is created just in the process of creating an automated assembly line.

My company built lines that required power to motors and devices than used up to 600 volts of power. Computers and sensors everywhere. The newer lines tend to have so much more crammed into them to increase production of units. More robots and tools means more power required. Power was usually not shut off during any downtime unless we were working on something that needed to be disconnected.

The automation field is pretty amazing until I stepped back to really notice how wasteful and unsustainable automation is.

I had to leave the industry. It’s become clear to me that automation is far too destructive to the environment. Corporations and businesses have no care to make automation cleaner or more sustainable.

I don’t know how people can expect automation to create more green energy equipment when automation itself is so dirty and demanding.