Garbage Day

Today is garbage day on my street. Last night I wheeled out our green cart and placed our blue boxes by the curb. Our house no longer really produces any garbage. Maybe a few nacho or chip bags (great alternatives to plastic bags by the way since they can't be recycled) of garbage a month.

If you knew me a few years ago you would know that I barely cared about my waste production. As long as I threw a few cans in a blue box, I was good. But people change, they grow and mature and become better citizens.

As a collective though, Ontarians have passed on change, embracing cowardice. We had a great chance to reform our deeply flawed electoral system. So long live the majority and ramming through legislation and not being really accountable to the electorate. Not that accountability matters anyway. Do you actually believe first past the post is democratic? Do you pick your candidates? Are you thick enough to think you do? This is the party system. Elites decide and you rubber stamp their decisions when you mark your X.

I'm thick too. I actually think that Mixed Member Proportional Representation (MMP) might help repair the rotten heart of "democratic" capitalism. At the best it would have put a happy face on a failing system. The problem is bigger than just how and who you vote for sadly.

The answer to most of our problems (climate change, local pollution, lack of true democracy, isolation, poverty and excess) lies in smallness. We need to live, work and die in a small geographic area; no flights to Tahiti if we feel like it, ripping through the air like a rusty razor. We need to eat food grown in a small geographical area, mainly by ourselves. We need small homes and to not fill them with small shitty trinkets. We need to accept much less than our gluttonous parents had and realize that we'll still have a good life and a world for our children to inherit; what joy is there is growing things and others' company. We need political organization that is very small scale; much smaller than our dismal municipalities. I'm thinking neighbourhood collectives setting priorities that matter to the people that live there. And everyone needs to participate not just our benevolent elites. We need to not be able to escape when we destroy our landbase as we so often do; then we wouldn't shit in our drinking water cut down all the trees for instance.

So there a solution. I can hear the silence. In this world, though, there would be no more garbage days like today.