Recently I went looking for a more sustainable way to shave, so that I didn’t have to throw away as many of those ridiculously expensive blade cartridges.

At some points in life I’ve used an electric razor, which had fewer parts that needed regular replacing.  I suppose you could try to make the case that a really well-engineered electric razor with a long-lasting battery could end up being lower resource usage than the manual razor with cartridges, but as electric razors got more crazy in their design (“buy this special gel-pack that only fits this one model of razor so it can automatically douse your face with soothing chemicals at just the right time!”) it felt simpler – and, okay, a little more manly – to just drag a blade across my face by hand.

But my cheap side cringes every time I walk into a drug store and pay $22 for 10 blades.  My cynical, paranoid side fumes as I see the razor manufacturers invent new models of razor blades that require a different model of razor handle and cost even MORE to buy, while also suspecting that the production quality is only decreasing over time so that the blade cartridges don’t last as long.

And let’s not forget the “disposable” animals that some razor and shaving cream manufacturers use to test their products on.  This is an issue that’s gotten more attention over the years, but there are still companies that perform toxicity testing experiments on rabbits and other animals.  (I recently wrote a letter to Gillette’s parent company Proctor & Gamble that in part asked them to make a more firm and permanent commitment not to test on animals.  I got a generic letter in response that said “Thanks for writing, Chris!  This is feedback I was hoping for…I can’t wait to share it with my team!” – sigh.)  You can find more products on mainstream shelves these days with “no animal testing” labels, if you want.

But back to the razor itself.

I found GFD, a German company that makes a diamond-tipped tungsten carbide razor blade that is supposed to stay sharp 1,000 times longer than regular steel blades, so that’s a great choice to use after you go for a swim in your large vat of gold coins.  (Okay, they’re only $150-$200 per blade, but try getting that to mass market.)

I briefly contemplated not shaving at all, and then looked at some pictures of myself experimenting with growing out facial hair in college, and remembered why that is not going to work.

And then I found what has so far been a magical piece of information in my search for a more sustainable shave:

It turns out that the quality of the shave with a particular disposable cartridge isn’t decreasing over time because the blade is getting roughed up by the shaving process itself – it’s steel, it can probably handle itself okay against hair and skin.  Rather, it’s when water sits on the blade after washing it that you start to see corrosion, causing tiny bits of the blade to flake off over time.  As you can imagine, when the bits that flake off are the blade edge, your shave suffers.

How do you prevent this corrosion?

Dry your blades really well after each use.  Some folks are using blow dryers, some folks just blot them with a towel.  I’ve been using the towel method for a few months and I have indeed seen incredibly extended life from the blades I’m using.  YAY!  Shaving is a little less dependent on disposable things now, and a little cheaper.

I was at a drugstore this week and looked at the packaging surrounding razor blades and handles being sold, and none of them have any instructions about preserving or extending the life of the blades.  Of course, they don’t have instructions of any sort, so maybe this is one of those things that’s supposed to be passed down from generation to generation.  (Or maybe razor manufacturers don’t mind too much if customers buy blades more often than they might otherwise need to.)

I know most of you read this blog solely for my personal hygiene tips, so I hope you get some mileage out of that one.  Next time I’ll cover how to make your own prescription contact lenses using plastic wrap, steel wool and duct tape.

But more importantly, the conversation about raising the debt ceiling is the wrong conversation to be having.

I’d like to present those observations, but instead of referring to “the U.S. Government” every time, I’ll just refer to this guy “Sam.”

Please tell me if I’m wrong or over-simplifying:

• Sam consistently spends more money than he makes. This means that Sam will always be short on cash, and that his lifestyle is by definition unsustainable.
• In order to keep living the life he wants to live, Sam makes up for being short on cash by borrowing money from his neighbors.  Sam has found a lot of different neighbors who are willing to loan him money, and he’s always reassuring them that he’s good for it.
• At some point, even Sam recognized that he couldn’t just borrow money without limits, so he set up a maximum amount of money he wanted to owe to his neighbors at any given time.  He called it his “debt ceiling.”
• But over time, as Sam got even more used to his lifestyle and didn’t bother to fix his inherently unsustainable cash flow, he realized he’d set the debt ceiling too low. So he raised it!  After all, it’s just his own self-imposed limit, so he can tweak it a little here and there and then lower it again later.  It’s similar to Sam’s friend who has a problem with alcohol abuse but always thinks he can handle one more drink when out at the bars.  Sam has raised his debt ceiling 10 times already.
• Sam’s friends (some of them experts in financial management) have tried to convince him to stop spending more than he makes so that he doesn’t have to keep borrowing money and raising his debt ceiling.  But this way of life is so enjoyable for Sam (at least when he’s not worrying about the neighbors he owes), he’s forgotten any other way to live.  Sometimes Sam gets angry when his friends and neighbors won’t leave him alone about his spending habits.  A few times he’s used physical violence (or the threat of it) to get some of his lending neighbors off his back for a bit.  Some people say they’ve seen Sam outright stealing from others to pay his bills.

If Sam were a person, we’d know that he is on his way to some pretty serious lows in life.

Bankruptcy, losing family, friends and neighbors, health issues, homelessness and possibly violence or early death.  Maybe someone would stage an intervention, maybe he’d get help after a close call, but maybe not.

But we know that Sam’s financial habits don’t work, aren’t sustainable, and aren’t to be emulated.  Sometimes, we know that it’s only by hitting bottom and facing these hard realities head on that someone with a problem like Sam’s can actually begin to rehabilitate himself.

It seems unfortunate, then, are we willing to allow our representatives in Congress to distract us with a conversation about raising the debt ceiling AGAIN because “there is no alternative,” knowing full well that it just enables the government to defer confrontation of its unsustainable way of operating.  All of the back and forth about who wants to cut what spending, who will get taxed how much, etc. is political theater, hand-waving and misdirection so that we don’t pay too much attention to the underlying problems.

Would a good and helpful friend of Sam’s indulge him in a long conversation about whether to raise his limit on borrowing today or next week, or whether he should continue his unsustainable spending on this restaurant or that piece of clothing?  When Sam says, “C’mon dude, get off my back, I’m just trying to have some fun here,” would we lay off?  No, a good and helpful friend would shake him by the shoulders and say (or scream) “Sam, you’ve got to find a new way to exist that doesn’t require you to perpetually borrow money from your neighbors.“

Unfortunately, as U.S. taxpayers, we’re all affected by and responsible for Sam’s actions.  He’s family, and the harm he does to himself is harm he does to us.  Are we going to let Sam go on this way, or are we going to intervene and make Sam try something different?

(Thanks to Planet Money for this explanation of the debt ceiling that inspired this post.)

1. Most high profile community leaders and organizations aren’t modeling awareness of sustainability issues, sometimes even at a basic level.
2. Almost all development and expansion efforts continue to incorporate a car-centric model of transportation and community zoning/planning.
3. Most of the focus on environmental education is targeted at individuals instead of at businesses, factories, and government organizations, the latter groupings being the ones that tend to use the most resources.
4. The notion of conducting “green business for green living” has been widely adopted as a goal, but also significantly watered down in its impact, often to the point of minimal actual benefit.
5. Sustainability-oriented efforts and organizations are fragmented and overlapping, despite valiant efforts of a number of projects to bring them all together at the same table.
6. The status of and appropriate use of natural resources has been made into an emotionally charged political or religious debate, which often leads to an avoidance of the topic for fear of offending.
7. There are basic educational challenges in the community about the question of how food is produced and where it comes from.  For many people, food is effectively created at the grocery store.
8. Some people seem to feel that solely by financially supporting one environmental organization or another, they’ve “done their part” for sustainability efforts in the community.
9. Our ability to transform the community mindset about sustainability issues doesn’t seem to be keeping up with the realities of peak oil, climate change and economic despair.

(These are some locally specific issues on top of some other challenges I’ve already identified, e.g. our personal fears around sustainable living.)

So, what are some paths forward that might address some of these challenges?

1. More organizational collaboration and communication.  It might be hard, it might be messy, but it has to happen.
2. More effectively mobilizing community members who care about these issues and who can have an impact on decision-makers
3. Asking corporations / factories / governments to participate as much or more than individuals in making Richmond and Wayne County more self-reliant.
4. Clearly defining sustainability and environmental concepts and terms, to avoid watering down or misapplying them.
5. Creating strong advocacy efforts, or better fund the existing ones
6. Bringing in speakers from other communities with success stories, real life experiences, practical suggestions that we can begin implementing today.
7. Work to untangle the science of sustainability issues from the emotional, religious, and political connotations.
8. Continue education about issues of peak oil, climate change and economic trouble, and how they impact our community.

That’s one set of challenges and possible solutions that I see.  What are the challenges and solutions you see in your community?

I’ve asked a version of this question before: Must we become the change we wish to see in the world? You can maybe tell that there’s a theme here – impactful personal lifestyle change is not often convenient, and sometimes it is downright scary.  But that’s not a reason not to spend as much energy and time as it takes to try to live more sustainably, right?  Change has to happen with each person individually before we can expect the system to change, right?

Or does it?

There’s an essay out there that’s been weighing on me lately, bothering me, in fact.  Essays like this don’t bother me unless either (A) I know they’re speaking the truth and I’m having a hard or slow time integrating that truth into my own life, or (B) I know that they’re missing something important in their treatment of the subject, but I just can’t put my finger on what it is.  In this case it may be some of both.

The essay is “Forget Shorter Showers: Why personal change does not equal political change” by Derrick Jensen.  Jensen basically says that it’s problematic to see an individual living more sustainably as an effective political act, and that devoting time and energy to doing so is not necessarily worth it unless it’s personally rewarding for you.  His reasons:

1. Simple personal living as a political act is focused on harm reduction, instead of on helping bring about needed positive change
2. Simple personal living assigns the blame, guilt and burden to individuals for addressing sustainability issues, instead of to the entities (corporations, governments, etc.) who are creating and perpetuating the problems.
3. Simple personal living as a political act accepts the capitalist redefinition of people from citizens to consumers, reducing our forms of action to “consuming” and “not consuming.”
4. If we don’t question the intellectual, moral, economic and physical infrastructure that create destructive, unsustainable ways of life, but insist that we want to personally be a part of the solution, the inevitable conclusion leads us to self-destruction (or, as Jensen puts it, suicide).

I’ve rephrased some of Jensen’s reasoning, so I hope you’ll read the full essay to get his original thoughts.  But here’s my take on what he’s saying and my original question:

I agree that it’s silly and self-defeating to expend significant resources on personal change without also challenging the pieces of infrastructure that cause harm in the first place.  I do think that a balance can be found more easily within the construct of a community than it can within an individual’s life.  Some people may be really good at effecting personal lifestyle changes while not so good at doing the work needed to challenge a broken economic system, and vice versa for someone else.  Working together, a community unit can do both effectively.

I also agree with Jensen that we must not accept the premise that we as individuals hold the sole power to make our existence as humans more or less sustainable, and that our mechanisms for doing so are choosing what products we do and don’t buy.  I feel embarrassed that I spend any time worrying about making sure the hallway light is off when I’m not using it as I drive by empty strip mall parking lots lit up like daylight, using far more energy than my hallway light ever will.

But I also know that corporations, governments, etc. are made up of individuals just like us, and so I believe that there is power in changing individual minds, modeling sustainable living for each other, and planting seeds of possibility.  It may not be as powerful as getting that strip mall to change their lighting practices, but it’s not nothing.

Jensen concludes his article by saying “the role of an activist is not to navigate systems of oppressive power with as much integrity as possible, but rather to confront and take down those systems.“  I know a number of people who believe that they’re doing both – that by navigating systems of oppressive power well, they are playing a role in confronting them, changing them, and even taking them down.

It may come down to the math of the situation, in equations where we can’t know all of the variables right now.  If enough people effecting personal lifestyle change or working within broken systems is enough to actually make a lasting difference, then we’re all set.  If it turns out that the systems of power and corporate/governmental destruction and resource consumption are far more effective than we could ever hope to stop, then we better hope that our individual decisions along the way were personally rewarding, as memories of a life well-lived in the face of a world breaking around us may be the only reward we get.

How does the math work out for you?  Is personal lifestyle change worthwhile and effective?

So I thought I would start an inventory of some of those fears, and see what else you might have to add.  By exploring our fears and understanding what they are, maybe we can find ways to help each other address them.

When we have conversations about living more sustainably, what are we afraid of?  What makes us a little anxious, a little hesitant?

1. Will I have to give up the things in life that I enjoy most?
2. Can I still do the traveling and exploring that I want to do?  Can I still enjoy the open road or take that trip overseas?
3. Will I have to completely change the way I run my business?
4. Are over-zealous tree-huggers going to try to tell me what I can and can’t do with my life?
5. Will I still be able to enjoy the foods I like?  Will I be eating some miserable and bland diet?  Don’t they want me to give up meat because someone isn’t brave enough to stand the thought of a dead cow?
6. I want control over my land and my property, but aren’t they trying to tell me what I can and can’t do with it?
7. Is someone else trying to tell me what’s best for my children?  Are they saying I’m a bad parent?
8. I don’t have the time or knowledge to grow my own food – how do they expect me to survive without groceries from *-Mart?
9. I really like my car – do they want me to give it up?
10. I’ve always wanted to have kids, but they’re talking about controlling the population – yikes!
11. There’s not enough money in our budget for the kinds of changes they’re talking about – who is going to pay for this?
12. Environmentalism is such an issue for the political left – how can I explore it without being a traitor to my conservative, right-leaning affiliations?
13. I’m worried that we are spending all of this time talking about recycling when there are more pressing issues to deal with!
14. These sustainability ethics seem to clash with my own political/moral/religious world view – I need to defend it or my beliefs will be trampled.
15. Our way of life is a great one.  I’m worried that these people aren’t patriotic and are trying to destroy what our country is all about.
16. This blogger nut wants me to reflect on my fears, and I have better things to do.
17. “Being misunderstood or even worse ostracized by friends and family who don’t understand or agree.” – from Becky in the comments
18. “Do I have to live with (and trust) other people?” – from Jim in the comments
19. ?

What else are we afraid of?

• Smaller Indiana, a social networking site for Indiana people, with an apparent trend toward IT/design professionals. It’s built on Ning, which I’m considering as a platform for a few projects. But mostly I’m just excited to see social networking applied at a more regional/local level – a great trend.
• If you enjoyed Thought to Exist in the Wild, you’ll enjoy this bit of satire: San Diego Zoo, Prison Merge. Yeah.
• The Emergency Party Button – oh yes, I will build this some day soon. They even got the music right.
• What You Do Counts – National Geographic selected this film by an Earlham College student as a finalist
• Someone took the time – a lot of time – to create an interesting map of humanity.
• Wired says you can keep your SUV, don’t bother paying for organic food, forget about the spotted owl, etc. because reducing carbon emissions is the only real battle that matters. Hmm.

It turned into one of my most intense speaking experiences to date.

I’ve given presentations and led discussions about a lot of different stuff, but they usually trend toward technology topics with which I’m very comfortable and have lots of experience talking about. They also tend to be specific enough that I don’t have to demonstrate a greater understanding of the universe or tie a whole bunch of big themes together. But in “Going Local,” it was about taking a hard look at how we (humans) got into the mess we’re in (energy crisis, climate change, economic collapse, widespread war and injustice) and making some very specific recommendations about what to do about it on the local level. Personal suggestions. Things that might offend, or at least cause discomfort. Things I’ve had a hard time saying out loud before.

It was also a kind of culminating presentation for me. The place where community-building, good communication and discussion, concerns about the energy and climate crises, and creating a vision for the future of Richmond meet is a nexus where I’ve been spending more and more of my own personal energy lately. There’s minimal personal risk in talking about optimizing a website for Google’s search engine, but when you’re talking about the sustainability of our lives in the place we call home, it somehow feels more edgy, vulnerable, scary.

Despite my anxiety, I think it turned out quite well. What’s more, I think it started some good conversations, some of which are still going on. I was grateful that the talk was not only attended by the somewhat academic population at whom it was originally targetted, but also local economic development officials, business owners, sustainability educators, friends, and at least one member of the media. Thanks to everyone who came and who shared your feedback.

For those who were there, I’ve posted the “menu” of suggested action items for futher comment and expansion, over at ProgressiveWayneCounty.org. And if you weren’t there, the suggested items may make more sense when you hear the rest of the spiel – I’m available to give the talk to your group or organization if you want. I’m ready to face the discomfort again, knowing how important having these conversations might be, trusting that I still have much to learn, and hoping that it will get easier each time.

1. Question to the local Mayoral race candidates about energy policy – I submitted a question to Mayor Hutton and Rick Thalls via the Pal-Item’s forum, asking “if elected/re-elected, what specific steps will you take to uphold the commitment the City has made to improve the environmental health of our communities, reduce emissions, discourage sprawl, increase fuel efficiency, and reduce energy consumption? What steps have you taken in your own life to reduce your energy consumption?” I wonder if they’ll respond on their blog?
2. The Cuddle Mattress – if you’re looking for a get rich quick scheme, just patent this idea today! (And think of all the heat loss prevented by more efficient cuddling.)
3. A Quick Video Introduction to Peak Oil – a primer on the concept of peak oil and resources available to learn more. Created by Aaron Wissner, who I met this past weekend (and geeked out with a bit over his Canon HD DV video camera).
4. Business Alliance for Local Living Economies – How can my business use less energy and produce less waste? How can I help my customers understand that locally owned businesses are important to the strength of our community? What new business opportunities exist for our region in the emerging green economy? BALLE has some good answers.
5. smallisbeautiful.org – programs that demonstrate that both social and environmental sustainability can be achieved by applying the values of human-scale communities and respect for the natural environment to economic issues.

I, having met Richard Heinberg and read his book The Party’s Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies, of course presumed it was something related to addressing the impact of the end of abundant, cheap oil. The cover has a very similar image that complements the book’s exploration of our relationship to oil. But when I visited the website that the postcard mysteriously directed me to, I found that it was an ad for…a credit card company. Their solution to the energy crisis? Gas credits when you make lots of charges on your card. You know we’ve reached a new level (high or low, I can’t say) of public attention to the state of affairs when credit card companies think they can make a few dollars off of people who are worried about our dependence on oil.

If you’re interested in a more effective approach than “going into debt for Mother Earth,” you could join me at the upcoming Fourth Annual Conference on Peak Oil and Community Solutions, in Yellow Springs, Ohio, where Heinberg will be speaking. It’s always a smashing good time, grounded in an accessible exploration of real community-based solutions.