On Recycling, Sociopolitics, and the Fall of Europe.

As many of you are now aware I live in Paris, or near enough -I can see the Eiffel Tower- that it counts as Paris (Montrouge). If all goes as planned I will be living here for 3 years, doing a Thesis to determine the vertical distribution of chlorophyll in the oceans based on the surface data we get from satellites.

Here in Paris I was once more plunged in a new life. I might have been living in Paris for 6 months last year as part of my masters, but still, last year felt like a transition state. This time, in contrast am here to stay.

Thanks to the money I am being payed to do my thesis, I am able to rent a very nice house. And for the first time I live alone, with time to spend in my house, and the house is really nice. I invite friends from work, and fellow Greek expatriates.

My time alone is both enjoyable and horrid. I get to enjoy cooking, and endure housekeeping. I get to revel in the magnificent urban panorama that awaits me on my balcony, yet depress as I cannot share these moments with my loved one. I get to ponder on philosophical questions, apprehend the collapse of our rotting world, and question the long-term feasibility of my relationship.

What is love? What defines friendship? Who am I without her? Who am I with her? Where am I going with my life? What parts of my upbringing do I keep, and what do I strive to change? How can I appraise those things?

These questions are quasi-universal. However this post has no claims of trying to solve them. This introduction was both an introduction to the text that follows but also an introduction to my psyche, in order for you to contextualize.

Walking in Paris you can very well see:
Stressed people are walking around, crowding the subway, the buses, the streets and their sidewalks.
On those sidewalks, so many homeless people live with what our post-consumption society is throwing out.
On my walk to the bus stop, every singe week, I see on the sidewalks, thrown out in a careless manner, books and chairs, mattresses and press irons, television sets and paintings. Socks and other clothing items are scattered in between. A household has been evicted, and soon the homeless and the poor come and pick things up. They are the true recyclers. Such items go from our trashcans to their lives in a constant manner.

Two blocs from my apartment lives a homeless man, encroached in an unused place at the entrance of a building. His bed consists of piles of mismatched clothing. He sits there, reading, always reading.

I am not a religious man, in any sense of that expression. Neither Christianity, nor paganism, nor any kind of superstitions hold any important sway on me. I do not believe we violated mother Gaia by burning down trees. For the matter I do not believe in the modern personification of Gaia. The Earth has no permanent balanced state, this was but a temporal homeostasis of the ecosystem, in what is nothing but perpetual, chaotic, struggle. The wester society however, saw the resources that Earth had, and in a very egoistic, very human manner decided to use it to its short term maximum advantage. This has thrown even more chaos in the system and whatever kind of instable balance there was before, now will keep shifting until a new earth ecosystem balances itself -with or without us.

In considering however that resources are unlimited, after the second world war we entered a system that has a delusion. Permanent expansion. Salaries should expand, spending should expand, liberties should expand. But all these expansions were not controlled. In the Western countries more and more people get to have a higher education, which fine, but then too many people specialize in domains with no demand. In the western countries, central control by the governments was nothing more than individuals siphoning out money from loans that the state took. The evolution of the educational systems is non-existent. The evolution of job distribution and planning is still at the amoeba phase. And now, we can expand no more. We have competitors in our resources distribution, that can produce for cheaper wares, and gradually antagonize us in the acquisition of goods, such as energy sources, basic materials, water, and less menial job distribution. They have already done so, and have no reason to stop, actually.

So what are our choices, you ask?
Find happiness in small things. De-centralize yourself. Get a garden and cultivate part of what you eat, gather part of the water you can consume, produce your own energy.

I know I was not really productive with this post. However, please remember, these are my personal rumblings to cleanse my soul.

Farewell.